What’s to Hide?
For whatever they are worth, the national quarterfinals of the college football playoffs were played around New Year’s Day. As is always the case, half the teams won and half the teams lost. Those that lost are pouring over game film, trying to figure out why they lost—was it an overall bad strategy, bad execution of a game plan, the wrong personnel, etc. That’s typical when a team loses.
The Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election. Seems natural to expect they’d want to do the same thing, to try to figure out why they lost. And in fact, when he was campaigning to become party chair, Ken Martin a year ago promised if selected, he’d conduct a thorough review of the election and make those findings public as a way to address the party’s mistakes and better prepare the faithful for the 2026 midterms and beyond.
Turns out that report will never see the light of day.
In a statement prior to the holidays, Chairman Martin said, “Here’s our North Star: Does this help us win,” meaning release of the report. “If the answer is no, it’s a distraction from the core mission.”
And apparently the answer was no, because despite more than 300 Democrats being interviewed in all 50 states, what they said will be kept secret, only for the eyes of a select few.
Sort of keeping with how the party selected its ultimate 2024 nominee, after pushing the incumbent who had won the delegates aside.
Frankly, I’m not sure what good making such a report public would do—except when you make a big deal about saying you’re going to do it, and you don’t…well, now it looks like something’s fishy.
For what it’s worth, Republicans commissioned a similar effort after the Romney loss in 2012. And it used blunt language in pulling no punches, concluding, “Unless changes are made, it will be increasingly difficult for Republicans to win another presidential election in the near future.”
You might say they took that to heart, since the GOP won the very next election. But not with a party regular. With an outsider. So it’s pretty fair to say Republicans as a whole haven’t learned from their mistakes, either.
Even more evidence that citizens feel left out of the process because the leaders of the major parties like it that way. No wonder there’s such a disconnect between the people and their government, and such unrest among voters.
