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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   16748 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026

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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.

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.

This is the perspective that I see commonly but disagree with vehemently. As a Kamala voter who wants the Democratic Party to have success in the future, the most dignified thing to do here would be not only to release the autopsy but to point highlights at the dirtiest of the laundry that gets aired out in the process. When one fails, there's no dignity in hiding or obfuscating the failure. Dignity is in owning the failure in a way that makes it clear that the most important thing to you about the failure is your wrongdoing or errors that caused the failure, to the extent that you welcome any and all humiliation that public ownership of that failure brings you.

If Harris's 2028 POTUS run's viability is dependent on the dirty laundry of her 2024 campaign not being public, then may her 2028 POTUS run not be viable, for the sake of the success of the Democratic party.

This is the perspective that I see commonly but disagree with vehemently. As a Kamala voter who wants the Democratic Party to have success in the future, the most dignified thing to do here would be not only to release the autopsy but to point highlights at the dirtiest of the laundry that gets aired out in the process.

The issue I see with the autopsy is its unlikely to be helpful. There are a few ways it could go. It could be like the RNC Mitt Romney autopsy, which was nonsense corporate donor catering. Embrace immigration, lower taxes, reform entitlements, etc. The Trump campaign rejected basically every recommendation and won.

So what ways did the DNC actually take the autopsy? I only think there are a few ways they'd actually take it:

  1. Racist-Sexist America rejected Kamala because racism and sexism.
  2. Kamala was too moderate. Joe was too moderate. We need Mahndami.

I don't think either direction would actually be a good evaluation of what happened, and would not help Democrats improve their chances.

If the Democrats were to release a report like that, the fact that the DNC would put their names on such a pathetic ego-protecting report is something every Democratic voter would find immensely valuable, for deciding how much reform the party leadership needs. Because a DNC that would produce such a report is one that is neither interested in getting things right nor in winning, and those are important characteristics for any supporter of any party to consider.

I am intrigued why you think Democrat voters think it would be valuable as a tool revealing the soul of the and dnc to voters as opposed to just confirming their priors.

Well, I understand that a lot of Democrats are blind tribalists, but a lot of them still do value the idea that our side should win because it's actually better than the other side, not merely because it's our side. If we can't openly analyze the "soul of the dnc," then we can't be confident that our side actually is better.

So you think there is a significant Democrat block that would be heartened by an official DNC document that says, basically, "we are too extreme on every issue other than the expensive old age retirement programs that will soon need to be cut even if we give our best efforts to fix them. Americans basically want a less loud 2019 Trump, which is what Biden promised, but because he was a corpse in a suit instead we got open borders and naked trannies on the steps of the white house. Everyone but Fetterman should take a breath of freaking air?"

Yes, I would wager there's a significant such bloc, though I'd also wager that the bloc of former-Dems or borderline-Dems who would be heartened by such a report to such an extent as to influence their vote positively in the Dem direction is even more significant. If not in absolute numbers, then certainly in the effect on votes. It's almost certain that such a report would cause a significant bloc of current Dem voters to peel away, but they don't have a mainstream party to go for, and I'd also wager that a very significant number of that group are concentrated either in blue states or blue enclaves of red states where the POTUS election, at least, would have minimal negative impact.

For a lot of people, and not necessarily fully blind tribalists, their side is better because of prior assumptions that are not in question. For instance, if you consider all immigration to be inherently enriching, or the kind of environmental positions that the Democrats have been pushing to be a non-negociable minimum, then there is no need to analyze the "soul of the DNC"; you are not going to alter these positions, you might at best appear to compromise on them publically but still intend on cynically carrying them on when in power. Basically, you just need to manage the situation with regards to the public, including avoiding giving the other side ammo.

For a lot of people, and not necessarily fully blind tribalists, their side is better because of prior assumptions that are not in question.

I would say that this sentence is essentially self-contradictory. The "fully" can sorta save it, but even then, to whatever extent these people are only partially blind tribalists, it just doesn't touch on the actual, meaningful thing about not being a blind tribalist, which means being open to questioning such prior assumptions.

Is not that they're blind, it's just that some things are not realistically in question; a blind tribalist would be 100% on board to dump these assumptions if their tribe also dumped them.

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