Hey everyone, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the bulwark. Now, you might have seen on Thursday that

the Democratic National Committee finally released its autopsy report looking at what went wrong in the

2024 election. The report's a mess. And that's not actually my opinion. Even the chair of the DNC,

Ken Martin, called it an unfinished product that was riddled with errors and

pretty much wasn't suitable for public consumption. He only released it because he was under

tremendous pressure to do so. But it raises a question, what would an actual legitimate autopsy

report look like? What would it say? What lessons could we learn from it? Well, lucky for you, we have something

about as close as possible to a more finished product. A week ago, the bulwark published a piece

by Rob Flaherty, who was a senior member of the Biden and Harris campaigns in the last

presidential election. Now, the piece was candid, and it was a detailed look at what Rob told

people who put together that actual DNC autopsy. But it went well beyond that. There was a lot of self-reflection in it and a lot of diagnosis of what went wrong and what went right. In light of the DNC releasing its report, we decided to do something we really haven't done before. We're turning Rob's piece

into an audio read. Now, a few disclaimers. The voice you're about to hear is computer generated.

This is also a long, I mean, long read. But we think you may really like it. Oh, and one more thing.

You can hear Rob's actual real voice on the podcast he co-hosts. It's called Nobody Knows Anything. Check that out afterwards. All right, without further ado, here is Rob Flaherty's piece titled, Here's What I Told, the DN National Committee autopsy, the post-election report commissioned by the DNC in 2025,

to examine what went wrong in the 2024 campaign. And you may have heard that it was never

released to the public. Because of that, there's been a lot of rightful concern among Democrats about

their not being an honest accounting of what went wrong and what we could learn from it.

But there are a few people who have insight into what the autopsy report actually says and can

share what they know of it. I'm one of them. I was deputy campaign manager of Kamala Harris's

2014 presidential campaign and of Joe Biden's campaign before that. My remit was things that

touch the internet, social content, creators, rapid response, paid media, fundraising, digital

organizing, and a few other odds and ends along the way. I was one of the few campaign staff

...