A bombshell leaked Democratic Party autopsy reveals Joe Biden‘s White House lavished polling and strategy on First Lady Jill Biden, while leaving Kamala Harris so neglected that aides had no research prepared when she was thrust onto the ticket.
The 192-page dossier commissioned by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) reveals that the Biden White House ordered extensive polling on the settings, issues, and messaging Dr Jill should use to support her husband’s presidency.
However, no equivalent research was ever commissioned for Harris, leaving pollsters scrambling to get three emergency studies into the field the moment Biden stepped aside in July 2024.
The author, veteran Democratic strategist Paul Rivera, brands the failure a ‘massive missed opportunity’ and concludes the White House never positioned or prepared its own Vice President to face Trump.
‘As a result, at the moment of the candidate switch the polling team discovered there was no self-research on the Vice President to guide the development of the research instruments,’ Rivera wrote. ‘An incumbent Vice President. With no research to share once she became the nominee.’
‘Had the White House explored and evaluated ways to leverage Kamala Harris earlier in the administration, perhaps it would have improved the President’s standing, and it certainly could have helped prepare her to lead the ticket,’ Rivera wrote.
The autopsy proved so politically toxic that DNC Chair Ken Martin initially refused to publish it, only reversing course after outcry from within his own party.
Martin has since admitted that by burying the report, he created ‘an even bigger distraction’ in a statement on Thursday. The dossier was published by CNN with heavy annotations from the DNC disputing the accuracy of many of the report’s claims.
A 192-page dossier commissioned by the Democratic National Committee reveals that the Biden White House ordered extensive polling on the settings, issues, and messaging Jill Biden should use to support her husband’s presidency
The leaked autopsy reveals so much was lavished on the then-first lady, while Kamala Harris was left so neglected that aides had no research prepared when she was thrust onto the ticket
The autopsy proved so politically toxic that DNC chairman Ken Martin initially refused to publish it, only reversing course after outcry from within his own party
The report also blamed the Biden White House for failing to ‘contradict or correct’ Republican attacks that branded Harris as Biden’s ‘border czar’ during the height of the migrant crisis.
Biden faced widespread disapproval over his handling of the southern border, with record numbers of undocumented migrants flooding across each day at the peak of the crisis.
Biden’s staffers also failed to promote positive messages about Harris to the press, according to the report.
‘The national campaign did not effectively drive Trump’s negatives, and the White House did not effectively support Vice President Harris over three and a half years to improve her standing before the candidate switch,’ Rivera writes.
The autopsy’s wider verdict on Biden is no less brutal, finding that his ‘Bidenomics’ messaging tied him personally by name to the economic anxiety voters felt over the soaring cost of basic goods like eggs.
In one of the most damaging admissions of all, the report concludes that down-ballot Democrats might have faced ‘even steeper challenges’ had Biden refused to step aside and remained on the ticket against Trump.
Dial-testing during Biden’s catastrophic June 2024 debate against Trump ‘demonstrated the weakness of the President’s performance,’ the report states.
Biden famously appeared frail and stumbled over his words during his disastrous June 2024 debate against Trump.
Within weeks of his catastrophic performance, the 83-year-old was forced to drop out of the race.
He became the first incumbent president to abandon a re-election bid since Lyndon B Johnson in 1968, leaving Harris just 107 days to mount a White House campaign against a fully prepared Trump machine.
