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Notes -
Pod Save America host Jon Favreau interviewed DNC Chair Ken Martin yesterday after months of criticizing Martin's leadership on the podcast. Martin apparently requested an appearance to defend himself, but the attempt backfired severely. Favreau's discontent stems from the DNC's unwillingness to release their "autopsy" on Kamala Harris' loss in the 2024 presidential election - a viewpoint Ken Martin once claimed to agree with during his Chair campaign.
Obviously Martin is in a difficult position (indeed, I wouldn't envy any white man attempting to lead the Democratic Party) because 1) everyone knows the autopsy will be humiliating for Harris, 2) Harris may be a future presidential candidate, and 3) donor funds rely on the DNC or their candidates not being revealed to have acted incompetently.
But really, Martin going back on his campaign promise is not of note here - keeping the autopsy to themselves is likely the right move to retain any dignity. More interesting is the bellwether progressive media mouthpiece openly targeting their ideological and sociopolitical wellspring. Favreau seems to conflate the burial of the autopsy with peril in future elections, as if 1) the Democrats have a history of being honest and confessional and 2) the mistakes of the DNC in 2024 are not apparent. I often question whether PSA are true believers or the modern equivalent of César Chavez's "don't want to hurt the cause" club, but here Favreau radiates (or pretends to radiate) true-believer-dom to a naive and childish extent. Of course he wants to see his party be honest - they're the good guys.
In the end, Ken Martin looks like Jerry from Fargo and Favreau looks like a kid struggling to accept that Santa Claus isn't real. But I don't expect either to leave their post - Martin is too valuable as a scapegoat and Favreau has a comfortable incentive to just keep swimming.
Not that any leftist/progressive was expecting good takes from Pod Save America, but listening to that makes it clear the DNC fully intends to repeat their mistakes of 2024. The only realistic path they have to a 2028 presidential election victory is some surprise candidate winning the primary over the wishes of the DNC like Obama did. Obama and Mamdani (NYC mayor being very different from a presidential election, of course) are recent examples of that happening, so it's not impossible, but the Democrats badly needed that in 2016, 2020 (sure Biden won, but it was embarrassing that beating Trump was a challenge at all), and 2024 as well. And this interview confirms the old guard is just as entrenched as ever.
The leftist/progressive position (at least the more practical leftist) is not that the Democrats are good, but that getting elected outside of the two-party system is infeasible and they aren't welcome in the Republican party, so the only remaining option is to try to co-opt the Democratic party. Which outside of a few exceptions (Mamdani, "The Squad") has not seen a lot of success.
What do you think the mistakes of 2024 were? Personally I'd go with:
(2) and (3) seem pretty accurate. I'd disagree strongly on (1): the Democrats' failure in 2024 was in no small part because they failed to communicate their successes to the electorate. Unless you were watching closely, the Biden administration appeared to be merely keeping the government going and not rocking the boat. Policies on the left can be sold as popular. People on the left regularly claim polling shows their policies are popular as long as you don't use use language pattern-matching to existing right-wing attacks on them. The problem is the Democrats either don't try or aren't good at it. And they try to fight any candidate that is good at it like Mamdani.
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