We Don’t Need an Autopsy to Tell Us the Democrats Failed on Gaza

A mini-brouhaha has erupted over whether the Democratic National Committee buried a so-called “autopsy” report on Kamala Harris’ defeat in the 2024 presidential election. There are fears that the report will not be released because it suggests that Harris’ defeat was due to her refusal to break with Joe Biden’s disastrous support for Israel’s sustained genocidal assault on the Palestinians in Gaza. As a result, some groups are accusing the DNC of a cover-up and demanding that the autopsy report be made public.

I have been a member of the DNC for more than three decades. I served 16 years on the party’s executive committee and 11 years as co-chair of its resolutions committee, and in 2016 I was appointed to serve on the drafting committee for that year’s convention platform. Finally, last year I was appointed by DNC Chairman Ken Martin to serve on a Middle East task force he created to help us understand how our party addresses U.S. policy in the Middle East.

I am no stranger to the way the party handles – or, more accurately, avoids handling – issues involving Palestine and Israel. In 1988, I spoke from the podium at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta to present Jesse Jackson’s platform calling for “mutual recognition, territorial compromise and self-determination for Israelis and Palestinians. For my efforts, I was asked to withdraw from the DNC, because “party leaders” feared that Republicans would use my membership and support for Palestine as a campaign issue. (I was reinstated in 1993.) On eight occasions over the years, I testified that the party needed to recognize Palestinian rights. Having argued and lost several times, I am well aware of the party establishment’s fear of addressing Palestine.

But I believe the fight over this autopsy report is not the area where those of us who support Palestine and know that leading Democrats have been on the wrong side of this issue for far too long should focus our energy.

I say this because any reporting on Democrats and Gaza would only tell us what we already know: that voters, especially Democrats and independents, are fed up with blind support for Israeli policies, and that too many Democrats and establishment political consultants are blind to this reality. We have years of polling and election data to prove it. We don’t need another report to confirm this.

A wide range of polls have established how significant the erosion of American public support for Israel is. The most comprehensive recent investigation on this subject was carried out by The economist in August 2025. Here’s some of what they found:

• Forty-three percent of voters favor decreasing military aid to Israel, with only 13 percent wanting an increase in such aid. Among Democrats, the decrease/increase ratio is 58 percent to 4 percent. Among independents, it’s almost the same.

• Is Israel committing genocide? Forty-four percent of all voters say “yes” and 28 percent say “no.” Among Democrats, the ratio is 68% “yes” and only 8% “no.” And among independents, it’s between 45 and 19 percent.

Other polls show the same thing. Last week, Gallup reported that, for the first time, more Americans say they sympathize with Palestinians than with Israelis. And voters repeatedly say they are more likely to support candidates who advocate such positions and less likely to vote for those who defend Israeli policies and want to maintain current levels of military aid to Israel.

As if to provide further evidence of this shift, with the midterm elections just months away, it is striking that more than three dozen congressional candidates have already declared their intention to reject PAC contributions from AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups. This includes a number of sitting members of Congress, all of whom have been strong supporters of Israel and have received millions of dollars from pro-Israel sources, including PACs and independent dark money spending.

While these changes in attitudes toward Israel have been in the making for several years now, they have been significantly accelerated by the Israeli attack on Palestinians in Gaza. While it is true that the horrors that accompanied the October 7 Hamas attack generated an initial wave of support for Israel, as the number of Palestinian civilian casualties increased and the extent of Israel’s massive and wanton devastation of Gaza became clear, support for Israel collapsed.

This was clearly evident in the 2024 presidential election. Post-election analyzes showed that Vice President Kamala Harris lost the support of a wide range of Democratic and independent voters because she refused to decisively break with President Biden’s support for Israel. Instead of listening to her own instincts and being more critical of Israeli practices and more supportive of Palestinian rights, she listened to establishment political consultants who warned against “anything that rocks the boat” on this “sensitive issue.”

Consultants, campaign operatives and media analysts did not understand the changes that were coming then, and they still do not understand them today. They continue to claim that Israel’s genocidal war has not completely transformed American policy in the Middle East. But change happens with or without them.