A Message from DNC Chair Ken Martin on the DNC’s 2024 After Action Report

I was elected Chair of the Democratic National Committee three months after one of the most painful and consequential election losses for Democrats in modern history. It was a punch to the gut, and people were pissed off.

How, we all asked, could Democrats have lost to Donald Trump again? How did we blow through billions of dollars? And where do we go from here?

When I commissioned a comprehensive review of the 2024 election, I started a process to answer those questions while interrogating where our party has systemically and historically fallen short. I didn’t want that process led by anybody directly tied to the 2024 cycle – either the campaign or the consultants involved – and I did not want to put my own thumb on the scale for what might be produced. What I did ask for were actionable takeaways for the future. I wanted real, in-depth, specific recommendations to improve our allocation of resources, tech, data, organizing, media strategy, and more. I chose someone who I thought could produce this type of report.

When I received the report late last year, it wasn’t ready for primetime. Not even close. And because no source material was provided, fixing it would have meant starting over, from the beginning – every conversation, every interview, every data set.

At the time, Democrats had just come off a series of massive wins in November’s off-year elections, and midterm season was about to start. In December, I announced we would shelve this report, and I meant what I said at the time – that I didn’t think dwelling on 2024 or looking backwards so late in the game helped us to win elections. And at the end of the day, winning elections is my job.

In short, I didn’t want to create a distraction. Ironically, in doing so, I ended up creating an even bigger distraction. And for that, I sincerely apologize.

I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards. I don’t endorse what’s in this report, or what’s left out of it. I could not in good faith put the DNC’s stamp of approval on it. But transparency is paramount. So, today I am releasing the report as I received it – in its entirety, unedited and unabridged – with annotations for claims that couldn’t be verified.

You can read it here.

In less than six months, we have midterm elections. In two years, a presidential election.

I agree with folks who have said we have to learn from the past to win the future. Decades into my political career, and now having served as DNC Chair for a year and a half, there are clear lessons that I have zeroed in on, deeply believe our Party must address, and can attest we are already implementing in our work as we look ahead to this election cycle and beyond:

• We can’t just be anti-Trump, we must have an affirmative agenda to sell the American people. In the wake of the 2024 election, we have seen Democrats run and win on a positive message around affordability, centering on kitchen table issues and the needs of working families. It’s resonating.

• We can’t stop campaigning at the end of an election cycle, we have to always be “on.” Our Republican counterparts are running campaigns 365 days a year, and we can’t let them define us for voters before we get a chance to define ourselves.

• Campaign ads are not a substitute for the deep relationship building we need to do with voters to win elections. This is especially true with voters who have felt ignored, left out, or left behind. We should invest in organizing early and connecting with our communities before we need their votes. To do this, we’ll need to ask our donors to chip in a little bit earlier, as well.

• We can no longer take our voters for granted. Communities that have been considered “mobilization” targets, like young voters, need to be treated like “persuasion” targets.

• While we are laser-focused on winning the elections ahead of us in November, we also have to keep our eyes trained on the long-game – how we win 5, 10, and 30 years down the line. That’s where the party comes in. We can’t expect to win if we don’t show up. We have to invest in building infrastructure and restoring credibility with communities that feel we have abandoned them.

• Part of the long-game is thinking local: fostering a strong bench of talent, racking up wins in state legislatures, and running candidates in every race all across the country. These local wins matter, and they also ladder up to national wins. We need to compete in each of the 3,143 counties.

• We must reinvest in a 50-state strategy and leave no state, region, or community behind. There are no permanent red, purple, or blue states. If we write off red states, then we’ve accepted defeat before we’ve even attempted to compete.

• Our party has to meaningfully commit to partisan voter registration if we want to expand our base and grow durable Democratic support.

• We have to retain and train top talent. A party cannot execute a permanent campaign with a seasonal workforce that burns out and churns out.

• The modern information ecosystem is fragmented and personalized. We need to speak authentically to voters in a way that recognizes that audiences consume content differently across communities, and tailor our strategy accordingly. Voter outreach requires competent multi-platform communication.

• The Democratic Party is a big tent with a lot of players. That’s a good thing. But we have to better coordinate with one another to strategize, streamline, and de-duplicate ahead of the next presidential cycle. When margins of victory are narrow, everything matters and we must ensure no task or tactic is left undone.

• The Democratic brand is in trouble and needs repair. When Democratic policies win through ballot measures, even in areas where our candidates are losing, we know that there’s an opening for us to connect with new voters. We have to restore confidence in our party and show we can really deliver on our campaign promises to the American people.

You’ll find several of these insights reflected in the DNC playbook for 2026, a guide for state parties and coordinated campaigns. It includes resources for campaign staffers, case studies on innovations from the last cycle that we can build on, and best practices to organize key constituencies whose support we must win back in 2026, 2028, and beyond.

People need to be able to trust the Democratic Party again. Trust is critical, because I also ran for Chair as a reformer – not a protector of the establishment or the status quo. I wasn’t supported by establishment politicians or the billionaire class. I was supported by the grassroots – by activists, by organizers, by labor, and by party leaders.

After 2016, I authored the superdelegate reform to ensure that voters, and not insiders, would choose our party’s presidential nominee. I passed a primary neutrality policy to outlaw even the appearance of party favoritism towards one candidate or another, ensuring that primary voters – not political bosses in a back room – choose our candidates. I gave up power as Chair to empower DNC members to elect their own representatives to our most powerful committees, and have ensured that our committees reflect the great diversity of our party by giving seats to our caucuses, as well. I authored the first-ever DNC resolution to pass that condemns the role of dark money in primaries, and I have put in place a reform task force to ban “dark money” in our Democratic Party presidential primary nominating process.

As Chair, I am prioritizing the grassroots of our party, and fighting to restore our working-class roots as we take back districts across the country that too many have written off.

We are winning elections, we are changing this party for the better, and now we need to repair trust.

I hope this is a start.