Perhaps it was much ado about nothing. After a torrent of calls to release the “autopsy” of the 2024 election, in late May, the Democratic National Committee finally published the unedited and unabridged report it had been sitting on for more than a year, which it had previously vowed it would not make public.
While the abbreviated Harris campaign had visibly struggled in the 2024 presidential contest, the months of waiting for the DNC autopsy allowed for much unfounded speculation about the causes of her defeat. Increasingly, persistent rumors about pro-Israel policy alienating progressive voters became a central pillar of the interim, unofficial postmortem in the public square.
Yet when the autopsy finally arrived, the much-anticipated words (or even topics) “Gaza,” “Israel” or “Jews” did not appear even once in the 192 pages of what “Pod Save America” host Jon Favreau called “gobbledygook.” Finally, it seemed to some that transparency would distinguish legitimate policy debate from claims that unfairly assigned collective responsibility to Jewish or pro-Israel Democrats.
However, rather than accept the data and analysis of the report, progressives pivoted again—suggesting that the glaring exclusion of Gaza was suspect and that their suspicions about its role in 2024 remain.
What can be made of these sins of (possible) omission, and where does this leave some Jewish Democrats who still feel singled out for blame at the ballot box?
At very least, it was clear from the summer of 2024 that Gaza was emerging as a divisive issue in the campaign—and therefore could be considered as part of a multi-causal analysis in the autopsy. After all, by the time Harris became the Democratic nominee without competing in a primary, she had distanced herself from then-President Joe Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war but didn’t offer much in the way of her own alternative vision.
The matter came to a head at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, when the “Uncommitted” movement, primarily composed of Arab and Muslim voters, and progressive and campus activists, was not offered a speaking timeslot (although the Goldberg-Polin family was). Controversy also swirled over the vice-presidential selection process, including as Pennsylvania’s Jewish Gov. Josh Shapiro later confirmed in his best-selling memoir, Where We Keep the Light: Stories From a Life of Service, that he had been grilled by vetters asking whether he had ever worked as an agent of Israel.
While Harris highlighted her family connection to the Jewish community, she offered few specific commitments on issues many Jewish and Zionist voters prioritized, and spent considerable energy appealing to other constituencies.
After the election, progressive activists and Democratic-adjacent commentators leaned into the explanation that Gaza—or, more broadly, Israel and the pro-Israel community—was a decisive factor in the 2024 loss, and could endanger both the midterms and 2028. Several Democratic figures and candidates, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ro Khanna of California, and presidential hopefuls California Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, wondered aloud about allegations of genocide in Gaza, conditioning or cutting U.S. aid to Israel, and a reassessment of U.S. relations with Israel and the Palestinians.
In her 2025 memoir 107 Days, Harris criticized Biden’s “blank check to Netanyahu” and “inadequate and forced” concern for Gazans as contributing to her loss. The DNC seemed to have engaged with the role of Gaza when it leaked to Axios that it was working with the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project, a pro-Palestinian advocacy organization, to investigate the issue, although IMEU later accused the DNC of burying their contribution. By spring, when Harris began gearing up for a renewed presidential push, she pointedly told donors that she wanted the autopsy released.
Is the report’s omission of Gaza suspect or simply not relevant? Certainly, it was a divisive issue, and a lack of data on voter attitudes and behavior in the report means that we can’t know how determinative it was at the ballot box either way. Further, the fact that DNC chair Ken Martin suddenly reversed course in hastily publishing the report, with the caveat that he felt under pressure to release it and didn’t “endorse” it, hasn’t helped allay concerns about what it does and does not contain.
Democratic analysts have also noted other striking omissions and incomplete sections, including discussions of Biden’s age and health status, and Harris’s rushed nomination. Was this a report that wasn’t quite ready for primetime, though it generally contained the major explanatory points? Or was it an unfinished document that didn’t follow through on its remit, by omission, commission or otherwise of topics that related to the 2024 defeat?
The postmortem seems to have raised more questions than it answered—and the role of pro-Israel policy may only be one of them.
But acknowledging the odd and opaque circumstances surrounding the report does not justify saying that “the Zionists,” Jewish donors, or pro-Israel Democrats cost Harris the election. The question is not whether Gaza and Israel matter to many Democrats. The answer is still that Gaza and Israel are unlikely to explain everything about the 2024 election.
The Democrats have many lessons to learn about their failures for the midterms and the 2028 general election. But the most important should be that a blame game can’t replace rigorous data and analysis-driven interrogation of the party’s successes and failures at the ballot box, especially at the cost of its loyal Jewish and Zionist constituencies. If it takes a second autopsy to get to the truth, including about Gaza, so be it.
