Author of DNC Autopsy Found Gaza Policy Hurt Harris in 2024—But Never Submitted Finding to Party Leadership
“This is all strange in ways that either suggest dishonesty or stupidity,” said one critic.
“This is all strange in ways that either suggest dishonesty or stupidity,” said one critic.
US Vice President and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, campaigning in Washington, DC, faces protests from hundreds of people expressing disapproval of her administration’s Gaza policy on October 29, 2024.
(Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Stephen Prager
Aug 07, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
When the Democratic National Committee at long last released its “autopsy” report on former Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss in the 2024 election in May, one of the most puzzling aspects was the lack of any conclusions related to her and former President Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Holly Otterbein of Axios reported on Thursday that the document’s author, Paul Rivera, did indeed look into the issue of Gaza and found it had a role in Harris’ loss. But he did not submit the findings to the DNC for inclusion in the report. Axios did not include an explanation for that decision.
Unpublished DNC Autopsy Chapter Criticized ‘Self-Enriching’ Party Operatives
Rivera confirmed Axios’ reporting from back in February that the conclusions had been shared with the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project, a pro-Palestinian think tank, which told the DNC that Harris’ failure to break from Biden’s policy on Israel’s US-backed assault on Gaza proved a liability with progressive voters, especially in Michigan.
This news led to speculation that DNC chair Ken Martin, who had resisted calls to release the autopsy in full, was doing so to avoid publicizing findings that portrayed Israel as an albatross around the party’s neck.
Rivera alleged earlier this week that Martin and top DNC brass withheld other portions of his report from public view, including a chapter criticizing the party’s overreliance on “self-enriching” consultants and party operatives out of touch with voters. Rivera claims to have handed Martin a three-ring binder containing the report, but Martin denies that this occurred.
Rivera, who was fired from his advisory role at the DNC following widespread public backlash to the release of the autopsy, has since published his own 564-page report on the 2024 election, which includes several pages examining the role of Gaza.
As of Election Day 2024, more than 43,000 Palestinians had been killed, including at least 13,300 identified children, according to figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health, and protests had swept the nation demanding that Biden cut off military aid to Israel.
While Rivera’s report does not conclude that Gaza alone cost Harris the election, it found that it had a clear role in alienating voters who would have otherwise supported Harris.
It found that in Michigan, one of the key swing states that handed victory to Trump, the losses in heavily Arab and Middle Eastern communities like West Bloomfield, Sterling Heights, Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, and Hamtramck, were significant.
In these communities, Harris received 30,850 fewer votes in 2024 than Biden did in 2020, while Trump gained 14,874, a swing accounting for nearly 20% of the 234,291-vote shift that handed President Donald Trump the state.
Rivera noted that the Uncommitted Movement, which garnered more than 700,000 votes nationally in the 2024 primary, originated in Dearborn, where Harris lost nearly a third of the support Biden had received in 2020. In nearby Hamtramck, her support tanked by 39% from Biden’s in 2020.
Notably, many of these voters did not flock to Trump, but to Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who received more than 12,000 votes across Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, and Hamtramck.
“The political analysis is simple,” Rivera wrote. “The electoral results and voting shifts in Michigan and elsewhere demonstrate the impact the crisis had on the Harris campaign.”
He concluded that the issue could not simply be boiled down to “messaging” but to concrete policy.
“For many voters whose family members were displaced, subject to violence, or killed, the inability of the administration to effectively intervene was unacceptable,” he wrote. “In 2024, absent a real end to military action and restoration of civilian control in Gaza, many voters in Michigan and elsewhere would not be satisfied.”
Asked by Common Dreams to elaborate on why he did not provide these findings to the DNC, Rivera did not immediately respond to a request sent through his website’s press contact.
Zeeshan Aleem, a political columnist at MSNOW was puzzled by the decision by Rivera not to provide the Gaza findings to the DNC.
“This is all strange in ways that either suggest dishonesty or stupidity,” he said. “The author of the DNC report said he did conclude that Gaza hurt Kamala, but didn’t include that finding in the report he submitted to the DNC. Why?”
The opacity and conflicting narratives surrounding the autopsy’s release continue to befuddle critics and onlookers.
Dave Weigel, a political reporter at Semafor, described the idea that Gaza cost Harris votes as “a water-is-wet finding guarded like the Ark of the Covenant.”
“Martin could have just admitted that, yes, this issue that got Harris protested everywhere and helped Trump win Michigan hurt the campaign,” he said. “Instead, it became a secret that Holly pried loose and generated an extra year of negative stories.”
The exclusion of Gaza from the official report released in May became ammunition for some commentators seeking to downplay the idea that Democrats’ support for Israel is an electoral liability or to accuse the IMEU Policy Project of spinning a false narrative.
Responding to the release of Rivera’s report, media critic Adam Johnson mocked those who framed it as a “conspiracy theory.”
“What’s so important to understand is that anyone denying Gaza harmed Harris’ chances is a rank propagandist. Nobody believes this in good faith,” he said. “Obviously it did. We can debate the degree of harm it had, but clearly it was significant and had many downstream deflating effects.”
Forced Out of DNC for Criticizing Party Leaders, David Hogg Speaks Out: ‘I Wasn’t Wrong’
As progressives notch win after win in Democratic primaries, the 26-year-old activist said it shows that the party “didn’t lose Gen Z; they just needed candidates to vote for.”
David Hogg, co-founder of Leaders We Deserve, speaks at the Parkman Bandstand before following the Freedom Trail during a “Democracy Walk” on April 8, 2026.
(Photo by Finn Gomez/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Stephen Prager
Aug 06, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
Just over a year ago, David Hogg, then the newly-minted vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, found himself unceremoniously pushed out after he called on the party to back primary challengers to unseat members of a moribund establishment.
Now, as progressives notch victory after victory against the party’s conservative old guard and are once again galvanizing young voters thought to have been lost, the 26-year-old reformer says it proves he was right all along.
“A year ago, I was removed from my position as vice chair of the DNC for daring to suggest that we needed to challenge geriatric, corrupt, and asleep-at-the-wheel Democrats in safe blue seats,” Hogg wrote in an op-ed for Zeteo on Thursday. “The establishment kicked me out for those ‘radical’ views, and the establishment is losing.”
His missive came days after yet another triumph for the left in Michigan, where the progressive Dr. Abdul El-Sayed overcame more than $60 million in outside spending in the Senate primary, more than half of which came from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), to upset a candidate backed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and other leading figures in the party establishment.
Hogg—a survivor of the 2018 Parkland school shooting who co-founded the gun control advocacy group March for Our Lives— noted El-Sayed’s victory as one of the latest in a “hot streak” for the organization he formed in 2023 and has continued to lead after being forced out of the DNC.
The group, known as Leaders We Deserve, is predominantly funded by small-dollar donors and has boosted young progressives to challenge the party status quo, running on policies like Medicare for All, increased taxes on the rich, expanding public services, and an end to aggressive foreign interventions and military funding for Israel.
The group was a major outside supporter of a super PAC that helped fuel democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s unexpected ascent in New York City last year.
It has also backed a number of progressive challengers who’ve gone on to defeat well-funded, establishment-backed candidates this cycle, including community activist Donavan McKinney in Michigan, labor organizer Claire Valdez in New York, and professor Randy Villegas in California, who’ve each claimed Democratic nominations for the US House.
Hogg wrote that state-level candidates backed by his organization have an 18-1 record in their races this cycle.
He argued that the success of these candidates served as a counterpoint to the conventional wisdom following the party’s losses in 2024, that Democrats needed to chase young voters to the right after they opted in unexpectedly huge numbers for President Donald Trump.
“As we saw in Mamdani’s race, and in races with progressive candidates across the country,” Hogg said, “young voters are turning out in record numbers, proving that we didn’t lose Gen Z; they just needed candidates to vote for.”
And contrary to the establishment’s fearmongering about “electability,” Hogg said the left’s recent wins show that “progressives aren’t just electable; they’re a dominant force.”
“Voters see clearly that many of our politicians are serving their largest corporate donors instead of the working class. Younger voters cannot fathom voting for a status quo that has never served them,” he said. “It turns out that a focused affordability message, moral clarity, and a commitment to not being bought motivates voters across the political spectrum.”
“A year ago, cable news pundit panels, elected officials, campaign strategists, and the entire establishment told me I was crazy for daring to challenge our party to do better,” Hogg said. “Today, I say: I wasn’t wrong; I was just early.”
As progressives notch win after win in Democratic primaries, the 26-year-old activist said it shows that the party “didn’t lose Gen Z; they just needed candidates to vote for.”
David Hogg, co-founder of Leaders We Deserve, speaks at the Parkman Bandstand before following the Freedom Trail during a “Democracy Walk” on April 8, 2026.
(Photo by Finn Gomez/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Stephen Prager
Aug 06, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
Just over a year ago, David Hogg, then the newly-minted vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, found himself unceremoniously pushed out after he called on the party to back primary challengers to unseat members of a moribund establishment.
Now, as progressives notch victory after victory against the party’s conservative old guard and are once again galvanizing young voters thought to have been lost, the 26-year-old reformer says it proves he was right all along.
“A year ago, I was removed from my position as vice chair of the DNC for daring to suggest that we needed to challenge geriatric, corrupt, and asleep-at-the-wheel Democrats in safe blue seats,” Hogg wrote in an op-ed for Zeteo on Thursday. “The establishment kicked me out for those ‘radical’ views, and the establishment is losing.”
His missive came days after yet another triumph for the left in Michigan, where the progressive Dr. Abdul El-Sayed overcame more than $60 million in outside spending in the Senate primary, more than half of which came from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), to upset a candidate backed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and other leading figures in the party establishment.
Hogg—a survivor of the 2018 Parkland school shooting who co-founded the gun control advocacy group March for Our Lives— noted El-Sayed’s victory as one of the latest in a “hot streak” for the organization he formed in 2023 and has continued to lead after being forced out of the DNC.
The group, known as Leaders We Deserve, is predominantly funded by small-dollar donors and has boosted young progressives to challenge the party status quo, running on policies like Medicare for All, increased taxes on the rich, expanding public services, and an end to aggressive foreign interventions and military funding for Israel.
The group was a major outside supporter of a super PAC that helped fuel democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s unexpected ascent in New York City last year.
It has also backed a number of progressive challengers who’ve gone on to defeat well-funded, establishment-backed candidates this cycle, including community activist Donavan McKinney in Michigan, labor organizer Claire Valdez in New York, and professor Randy Villegas in California, who’ve each claimed Democratic nominations for the US House.
Hogg wrote that state-level candidates backed by his organization have an 18-1 record in their races this cycle.
He argued that the success of these candidates served as a counterpoint to the conventional wisdom following the party’s losses in 2024, that Democrats needed to chase young voters to the right after they opted in unexpectedly huge numbers for President Donald Trump.
“As we saw in Mamdani’s race, and in races with progressive candidates across the country,” Hogg said, “young voters are turning out in record numbers, proving that we didn’t lose Gen Z; they just needed candidates to vote for.”
And contrary to the establishment’s fearmongering about “electability,” Hogg said the left’s recent wins show that “progressives aren’t just electable; they’re a dominant force.”
“Voters see clearly that many of our politicians are serving their largest corporate donors instead of the working class. Younger voters cannot fathom voting for a status quo that has never served them,” he said. “It turns out that a focused affordability message, moral clarity, and a commitment to not being bought motivates voters across the political spectrum.”
“A year ago, cable news pundit panels, elected officials, campaign strategists, and the entire establishment told me I was crazy for daring to challenge our party to do better,” Hogg said. “Today, I say: I wasn’t wrong; I was just early.”
