Politico reports:

The Democratic National Committee’s autopsy of the 2024 election doesn’t mention the war in Gaza. That’s sparking condemnation from across the party — and reigniting questions about leaders’ reticence to engage on the polarizing issue.

Multiple progressive activists said they had spoken with the report’s author about how the Biden administration’s approach to the Israel-Hamas conflict hurt former Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, especially with younger and more progressive voters.

David Hogg, a former DNC vice chair who was ousted last year, said in an interview Thursday that he had told Democratic operative Paul Rivera, the report’s author, “we need to acknowledge the role that Gaza played in us losing younger voters.” Hogg also said that during his time as vice chair he raised the same concern during a three- hour meeting with party officials.

The exclusion of the war in the report caught pro-Israel Democrats off guard as well.

“When it arrived in my inbox, I immediately clicked on it, used the search function, and searched for Gaza. Came up as zero,” said Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America. “Israel came up as zero, Jews came up as zero. I was surprised. It looks like there’s a huge omission.”

Members of the pro-Palestinian group IMEU Policy Project told those working on the post-mortem that the Biden administration’s support for Israel had cost the ticket. At the closed-door meeting last July, they were told in return that the DNC’s own data found the administration’s approach was a “net-negative” in the election.

And yet, that finding wasn’t included in the report.

“Ken Martin should release the information that the author of the autopsy told us clearly and unambiguously, which is that DNC officials’ review of their own data found Biden’s support for Israel to be a net-negative for Democrats in 2024,” IMEU Policy Project Executive Director Margaret DeReus said in a statement. [Continue reading…]