Democrats' "autopsy" of 2024 loss is AWESOME!! | Hour 1

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. Okay, the Democratic National Committee, the DNC, has released its autopsy from the twenty twenty four election. And it's awesome. It is awesome, all right. I say that as somebody who is very interested to, you know, to hear the arguments from, you know, the party leadership and the people who were like tasked with trying to figure out why they lost. Very interested in their thoughts on this stuff. But also I don't want them to be successful, and so this report is awesome. I went through the one hundred well it's one hundred and ninety two pages, but the first two pages are blank for some reason, and every single page has a disclaimer that says this document reflects the views of the author, not the DNC. The DNC was not provided with the underlying sourcing, interviews, or supporting data for many of the assertions contained herein, and therefore cannot independently verify the claims presented. So this is. So, this is there the autopsy that members of the Democrat Party have been demanding to see since it was completed sometime around December. But the DNC is like, we didn't do that, We object to this, and they'll like almost every page has notations, boxes and stuff with corrections, and a lot of the boxes are identical page to page to page. They say things like claim contradicts public reporting or contradicts claims elsewhere in the report. No evidence provided for many claims in this section. Methodology appears internally inconsistent. Okay, So the DNC, whoever it was at the DNC that got this draft, and I don't know who authored it, but people at the DNC went through and just and literally made red marks all over. They just bled all over this thing. Now they break down. I will read to you some of the highlights as I have picked them out. I'm not going to go into like there's a lot of pulling stuff and whatever. I'm like, I only printed out probably about ten pages. There's also a story that appeared at w R a l written by Will Doran, the state government reporter who seems to have a special interest in amplifying anti Israel tweets. But anyway, Will Duran, he focused on the section on Josh Stein, and there was Josh Stein's campaign was used in multiple places in the autopsy report. Okay, so was Jeff Jackson's. But there were also comparisons with other gubernatorial races and attorney general races throughout the country. So what w what Will Duran at WRAL did was to just focus on the North Carolina governor's race component, which that's look that you're taught this like almost on day one in journalism school, where you go in there and they're like, okay, here's a national stre localize it, right, So the national story is the autopsy. Localizing it means find the local angle inside the story, right, Okay, So here's I'm going to start with the WRAL story on Josh Stein because then I'm going to go back to the full report. So when I hit on those parts, you'll have a point of reference. Okay. So Josh Stein's twenty twenty four campaign for North Carolina governor should serve as a template for National Democratic Party politicians in future elections, according to an internal report made public Thursday. The Democratic National Committee commissioned the report following the twenty twenty four election, in which its presidential nominee, former Vice President Kamala Harris, lost every swing state to Republican President Donald Trump. The report has been kept secret until now. On Thursday, DNC chairman Ken Martin said that he had decided to release the report, even as he slammed it for being poorly sourced and in places making basic factual errors. The version he released shows not just the report, but also DNC backed annotations throughout calling into question various statements or assumptions right. So, the recommendation in this report, as it pertains to like governor's races, is that every Democrat governor needs to run their campaign like Josh Stein, because Josh Stein overperformed in all of these different demographic groups than Kamala Harris did. The report is critical of the DNC and National Democrats. What what do you think? The report focuses on what do I always say right about? Why voters or sorry, why Democrats think they lose elections. Why do Democrats think they lose elections? I mean, aside from you know, Russian interference. Okay, Like, why do they think they ever lose any race whatsoever? Okay, aside from Jerrymanderin. It's never their positions, it's never their policies. It's never things they say. It's never ways they behave. It's never ways that they talk to voters. It's never ways that they alienate people new It's always one thing. It's the messaging. And that is exactly what this report says, which is why it is awesome. It's the same thing they continue to make the same mistake. The report is critical of the DNC and National Democrats messaging to voters. See, it's just they didn't do a good enough job in explaining why your five year old needs to see our tuned porn in their library, right. See, it was a messaging thing. If we could have just figured out the right words to use, then you would have been fine with this. You'd have been fine with your daughter losing out on that scholarship because a boy competed against her in won. You would have been fine if I had just figured out the right way to make this argument palatable to you or if you had believed my lies. Right from the report quote, we must admit and accept some hard truths about our party. Since the high point of the two thousand and eight Obama landslide, when he received nearly ten million more votes than John McCain, the Democratic Party has vacillated between stagnation and retrogression. I mean that's not on again, not on policy here. This is not about policy. This is about their performance, the number of races they win and number of legislatures they control and governor's mansions they occupy. That's what they're talking about stagnation. In other words, we're not picking up more legislative bodies or chambers. We're losing them in fact, and that was one of the one of the hallmarks of the Obama era. In his eight years, no other president had seen the loss of more state legislatures and governor's races than Obama. His presidency was fantastic for him, not so much for all of the Democrats running in all of the different states. In doing so, the report says, we have lost the confidence we once received from everyday Americans, and election results show it. In the sixteen tumultuous years since that historic election, Democrats have lost ground at every level of government, but it pointed to North Carolina as a good model for how Democrats could change their messaging, using Josh Stein, who won the twenty twenty four good Natorial race with the largest margin of victory in decades. So all you need to do. Is find a bombastic and porn addicted lieutenant governor to run against with a whole bunch of shall we say, troublesome or problematic posts online and run him. Oh and also somebody who calls himself a Nazi. Which that explains Graham Platner, does it not? Now it makes sense? Oh? Wait, no, you want to beat that guy? Hm. You know. Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life and art. Stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creativideo. Started in nineteen ninety seven in Minhill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos, and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories, all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot com. Let me jump over to the text line. John sends me a screenshot of Congressman Dan Crenshaw. Although did he lose his primary? Is he still in Congress anyway? He says. In case you're wondering about the current state of House Democrats, they just voted against establishing a Smithsonian American Women's History Museum. The objection was that it did not include a dedicated wing for trans history. You almost have to admire the consistency they managed to turn a women's museum into an argument about men, right, which is exactly what I've been talking about. Thank you John Democrats keep talking about, oh, we lost because our messaging. We just didn't get our message out. No message received, guys, message received, loud and clear. In fact, there's a new poll out yesterday, I think it was by Siena, and it's like every every demographic is telling the Democrat Party to move back to the center, Like majorities of all the demographics, they're all like, you need to become more moderate, need to move back to the center. Steve says, message message, the Democrats don't do a good job period. Yeah, that it is sort of the problem here is that if you want to see what you're gonna get with Democrat leadership in complete control, we have examples to look at, and they're not great. Don t says Josh Stein for president. That's I'm not I am sure they're gonna start floating his name too, along with Roy Cooper. Right. Sean says, I heard a news outlet blame the twenty twenty four loss on the rise of podcast influence on young white men and the fact that they were texting too much. Excuse me, texting too much instead of knocking on doors. That's in this report. To Sean, Yes, they need to they need to go where the young men are that's in here, and we did and they they did not do enough door knock and they have to do more of that. Never once mentioned that Kamala was a dingbat who couldn't answer simple questions and was never selected through primaries. Yeah, so this report talks a lot about organizing, about advertising, advertising spending, political action committees, party operations, get out the vote operations, messaging tech, what they spend their money on, where they're devoting their resources, like all of that stuff. Never never do they mention any policy positions that might be unpopular. They never mentioned any of the crazies and the violence. They never mentioned Joe Biden's cognitive decline and the cover up telling us that everything is fine. Joe Biden is actually doing jumping Jackson, running circles around the twenty three year old staffers. Right, he is sharp as attack. I've never seen Joe Biden smarter, which is really not a high party get over. But either way, like we could all see what was happening, and Democrats kept lying to everybody. The leadership kept lying to everybody, even though behind the scenes they were trying to force him out right, which they eventually did do after he you know, trudged up onto that stage for that debate, and everybody was like, what is that? What is going on here? And then it became so obvious the media couldn't cover for him anymore. And then it was like, got to get rid of him. So what do they do? They annoyed Kamala Harris. Poor Kamala she only has one hundred days to run for president. Oh that Raally hamstrunger. Yeah, I know. I think it might have been the fact that you guys, you know, shut down any effort to have a primary when there were some Democrats who were calling for it, that Joe Biden needs to have a primary, but no, no, no, Democrats shut all of that down. They shut down any kind of challenge against Kamala Harris as well. They anointed her. The Party of Democracy did not hold a primary. They just installed Kamala Harris and then said you got to vote for her, and she had to run on Joe Biden's record, but also not really on Joe Biden's record. Very difficult position to be in because his record was pretty atrocious. And I know people are complaining about three point four percent inflation right now, but I'm old enough to remember twelve and a half percent inflation under Joe Biden in a single year, right, and those prices never come back down, so we're still living with the impacts of all that spending. None of this is ever mentioned in the one hundred and ninety pages of their post mortem, which again is awesome. Yes. Back to the wilpiece that focuses on Josh Stein, saying he was smart to focus less on abstract issues and identity politics and connect with voters on the issues they say matter most, including the economy, disaster relief, and addressing housing affordability. Morgan Jackson, longtime Democrat strategist in North Carolina, worked on Stein's campaign, said they knew Republicans would make crime and immigration big pieces of the ed campaign or the political campaign rather, and were ready to counter that messaging. One of Stein's first campaign ads in twenty twenty four said that quote sentinel must be stopped at the Mexican border, and featured two local sheriffs endorsing him. Do you remember who the sheriffs were. Yeah, they were urban Democrat sheriffs who were not cooperating with ice. Jackson said that Republicans across the country have done a masterful job of getting voters to associate Democratic politicians with far left positions. Yes, that's been all the Republicans that did that, right, Okay, Morgan, that was the Republicans that convinced the electorate that Democrats are moon that crazy when it comes to things like public safety. Yeah, that was That's just messaging. See once again, it's just the messaging. It's not the reality. Tim Carney from the Washington Examiner, he's a senior columnist. He tweeted out, I guess this was Yeah, yesterday, does the Democrats autopsy say, quote, we did open borders, tried to trans people's kids, lied to them about Biden's brain, and then ran someone we all knew was a horrible candidate. That's no, No, it does not mention any of that. It's just this is why I'm saying this is awesome. Somebody said down the text line way, why are you telling them? Don't get don't tell them, don't tell them why you know they're they're losing, like they're they're not listening to me. And even if they heard this show, they would not do anything differently. They are I've said this before. They do not have the natural immunity to get themselves out of this ditch they're in. So they're going to keep going, you. Know, further and further and further to the left, and they're gonna keep telling themselves all the sweet little lies that they need to in order to not mess up their echo chambers, not anger and increasingly violent base. So they can't course correct, which is why all of this autopsy stuff is such a joke, because all they're talking about are operations and metrics and spending levels. They never talk about any of the things that they were doing that made people recoil from them and their brand, their brand everybody talks about. You know, Donald Trump's approval numbers are like at thirty something percent, is the worst ever. Like that definitely could impact his run for reelection. Oh right, yeah, Like, here's the thing, I don't care what Trump's approval numbers are. It doesn't matter to me. It would only matter if he's running for reelection, and then that may indicate, Okay, you probably want to get rid of this guy if he's running for reelection. You know what, though Democrats' approval numbers look. Like they're lower than Trump's, the Democrat Party has a lower approval rating than Donald Trump. That's a problem for them right now, and they are running for election. So anyway, back to the U. Let me go to let me actually go. To the report here itself, the actual autopsy. Unfortunate reductions in support and training for our state parties, sequential shifts in voter registration, a loss of partisan organizing capacity, and a persistent inability or unwillingness to listen to all voters has provided the other major party with opportunities for advancement at the expense of democratic growth, evolution, and ability to find common ground with seemingly disparate groups of voters from coast to coast and the heartland. Democrats tend to ignore. Yes, this is identity politics, Democrats. This is the game you've been playing, right, So this is not a surprise. Historically, Democrats have held the advantage in each of these areas. The Democratic Party has always tried to be seen as the party of the people, the party of workers, the party of fair play and civil discourse. That's what Yeah, yes, yes, we've been calling George W. Bush Hitler. Yeah, we said, Paul Ryan, that boy scout that he was trying to murder granny's and stuff. But that's fair play and civil discourse. Okay, that's our brand. See we're just not messaging well enough. No, see you are. But people see those messages when you said Mitt Romney basically killed a woman with cancer, right, Like, that's messaging guys, you did that. The party's connections with working Americans and their families were forged through decades of organizing and engagement, the development of a vibrant and inclusive party infrastructure, and a relatable agenda which helped us connect in homes, workplaces, and neighborhoods across the country. Hmhoe, tell me more about the relatable agenda. Oh they don't. They don't. In one hundred ninety pages they never touch on the relatable agenda again. This report explores with depth and breadth how we'd lost these were relationships by examining both candidates, specific circumstances, and the overall trending away from effective and accountable politicking, and seeks to expound upon the combination of strategic, technical, and organizational improvements Democrats need to form an effective and durable majority party strategy. The report identifies the programs and priorities for consideration and implementation to build our party to win over the next decade and to again become the party of the people well into the future. And then they focus on josh Stein's campaign. Well, later on they go and focus on Josh Stein's campaign. He was able to win fifty fifty five, forty three, whatever it was, but it is concerning, They say, how Robinson was able to capture forty five percent of the state's vote even after his repudiation of equal rights for everyone and proudly and loudly asserting he was a black Nazi, which was an online joke. You guys keep telling us about Graham Platner and his Reddit comments and how he was just joking and it's all just misunderstanding and all of this stuff, when it was quite obvious that the black Nazi comment was a joke. He was making a joke that, oh, they're accusing everybody on the right of being a Nazi. I guess I'm a black Nazi. That's what he's saying. That's what he said, which he said it wasn't him, but then we find out it actually was him. Robinson's performance must be a wake up cull to Democrats, even without the support of Trump and major organizations. Extreme right wing candidates can still leverage the conservative media ecosystem to engender support and momentum for their platforms. Right, so they pretend as if they control no media. They really do believe this. It's amazing. They really believe that they have no media dominance, that they don't get to shape narratives. Like, for example, if they had a president who was cognitively impaired and was declining in front of all of our eyes, they would not be able to hide this from the American people because the media would expose them immediately because it's all conservative media. Like they are so. Cognitive dissonance. I shall say that cognitive dissonance. I'm trying to be measured. They do say that Robinson's campaign imploded, his inflammatory statements made him toxic. Approximately, here's the key for a lot of people that always ask me this. Approximately six point eight percent of North Carolina voters cast their ballots for Trump and Stein, and people don't believe this whenever I tell people like how could Robinson have lost? Right? Because North Carolina has a small but significant and impactful swing voter or sorry, split ticket voter. These are mostly college educated suburban women over the age of forty five. These are your security moms that delivered wins for the GOP when George W. Bush was president. These suburban they were soccer moms, they became security moms. That's who this group is predominantly going over. The Democrats until yesterday hidden post mortem or autopsy of why they lost the twenty twenty four election, and if this is any indication they will. Have learned nothing. They talk about how Josh Stein's win in North Carolina should be a blueprint basically for everybody else running. But they do point out that there were some problems with Robinson's campaign, to say the least, and that may have helped Stein a little bit. So he overperformed Harris right, so he in several demographics, particularly men, He won fifty one percent of men. Harris only pulled forty percent rural voters. Stein got thirty eight percent of rural voters. Harris only got twenty nine percent white non college educated voters. Stein pulled fifty percent of those, Harris got forty three percent, and new voters. Stein got fifty six percent, Harris got forty eight percent, And that is the first time in modern Democrat history where a Democrat presidential candidate did not get at least fifty percent of the new voters because they're young. These are people that are just showing up for the first time. Another key part here is in the assessment of the North Carolina Attorney general's race. Jeff Jackson aka Baby Jesus, he performed better than Harris, but not as good as Stein. They say that Jackson's support kind of put him in the middle. Mainly they chalk got up to lower race visibility because the attorney general's race doesn't have sort of the high profile nature of the governor's race, and also that the Robinson blast zone wasn't large enough. And I was saying that during the campaign, that's what Democrats were trying to do. They were trying. To expand the blast zone around Robinson to try to take out as many other Republicans as they could. So if you had a picture taken with Mark Robinson, they were plastering that all over the place. But it didn't really have that big of an effect. Apparently, lower races, they say, did not benefit as much from Robinson's collapse, but they probably still benefited somewhat. And then there was this line which I find very interesting because I'm old enough to remember what Democrats were saying about Dan Bishop. They said Dan Bishop was a conventional Republican. There was less clear of a contrast. He was a conventional Republican. I thought you guys said he was an insurrectionist and a Nazi lover and all of this other stuff. But he's a conventional candidate. Interesting. They go on to say that they have a male voter problem. Every down ballot Democrat did better among men than Kamala Harris did, and they specifically highlight young men of color. Harris saw dramatic drops in support among young Latino men and young Black men compared to Biden's twenty twenty performance. However, Stein recovered significant ground with both groups, suggesting his campaign found effective ways to reach these voters. Stein's results suggest it's possible to win women and compete with men with the right approach by being a dude in the Democratic Party. Okay. I added that last, yep, like, my takeaway here is that Democrats have a problem attracting male voters, and why would that be. They go on to say they talk about education polarization and that this appears mostly among white voters. Black voters show minimal education gaps, Latino voters show moderate gaps, while white voters show the most significant splits. Right college educated voters supporting Democrats significantly more than non college degree holding, unaffiliated and Republicans, but Stein hit fifty percent with white non college voters of both parties, all parties, all affiliations, white non college voters. Education appeared mostly among white voters the most significant split. I wonderer, and I'm just spitballing here, I wonder if demonizing white male voters may have some consequences for the political party that has been doing that. Do you think maybe, just maybe there's a chance, maybe there's a chance there just throwing it out there, they talk about the ticket splitting there was about they claim ticket splitting races North Carolina eight point five percent, mostly trump Stein. Ticket splitters are overwhelmingly college educated, suburban, older voters who vote consistently. They turn out all the time. They are small as a percentage of the total voting population, but they are decisive and they evaluate candidates individually. Back to the WRAL story, because there is one other portion of this report looming in the near few sure is the twenty thirty census, which could bring more bad news for the Democratic Party. And indeed, in the report it talks about how there are a dozen seats that are likely to flip to Republicans after the twenty thirty census. And that's not because of the jerrymandering. This thing was done in December. It's not jerrymandering a redistrict thing. It's doesn't have anything to do with that. It has to do only with migration people leaving blue states, reliably liberal states like New York, Illinois, California. They are all projected to lose seats in the US House and therefore in the electoral College, which is used to elect the president, which is why Democrats are now trying to abolish the electoral college. They're trying to enter into compacts with other states in order to pick the president when they don't get enough electoral college votes. This is only due to a shift in the population of people fleeing the states that are governed poorly by Democrats. Most of the expected growth is in the south. North Carolina, Florida, and Texas are all expected to gain more political power after the twenty thirty census, as are Arizona, Utah, and Iowa. And the report says we either adapt to the changing conditions of the arena or history will leave us behind. But again, we're not going to change any of our messaging. Our messaging is flawless, Our positions are popular. It's just a mobilization issue. On the text line, David says, Pete, did the autopsy not explain how President mumble bumbly stumbly was hilariously exposing their entire party? No, it's not, No, it did not. Josh Stein will eventually get his comeuppance if he doesn't change his ways. Yeah. See, here's the thing. Josh Stein is now accumulating a record as governor. You can kind of you know, lay low. As Attorney general, you come out and make some I'm tough on crime speeches, press conferences like you pick a couple of things to make yourself appear to be tough on crime. Right, But as governor you now have to sign bills. And when you keep signing bills, or you keep vetoing bills that are popular, you are now accumulating a record. That record can be used against you in your re election. And if you have any eyes on a higher office. That stuff will come back to him guarantee, just like it's coming back to Roy Cooper as we speak. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.