Democrats spent years calling President Trump’s supporters extreme, deplorable, and out of touch.

Now their own party is being forced to say what MAGA voters already knew: the Democratic establishment abandoned working-class Americans and got punished at the ballot box.

Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, went on Meet the Press this weekend and delivered a remarkably blunt admission about his own party’s failures.

He said Democrats “too often ran status quo establishment candidates” who refused to challenge a rigged economic system, and that working-class voters had been “shafted.”

CNN commentator Scott Jennings summed up the nearly 200-page DNC autopsy in a single sentence that cut straight to the bone.

ADVERTISEMENT

It is hard to argue with that assessment when even Democrats are now saying the same thing in slightly more polished language.

Khanna’s comments came in response to the long-awaited Democratic National Committee autopsy of the 2024 election, which was finally released last week after months of internal pressure and delay.

The release itself was a disaster.

DNC Chair Ken Martin kept the document under wraps for months, fueling speculation and frustration inside his own party.

When he finally put it out, he slapped a disclaimer on it saying the report did not meet his standards and that the DNC could not independently verify many of its claims.

That is not an autopsy. That is a cover-your-back memo released under duress.

Multiple elected Democrats and party operatives called for Martin to resign, arguing he had badly mismanaged the one document that was supposed to chart a path forward.

The Associated Press described the DNC release chaos this way:

One day after the party released its botched autopsy report on the 2024 election, Democratic leaders were still limping toward the midterms while prominent voices inside the party demanded changes at the top.

ADVERTISEMENT

Ken Martin faced calls to resign from elected Democrats and operatives who said he mismanaged a report that was supposed to examine the party’s failures and offer a path forward.

Martin kept the document under wraps for months, fueling speculation, then released it while arguing it was too flawed to be useful.

The document also appeared with a red disclaimer saying it reflected the author’s views, not the DNC’s, and that the committee had not received underlying sourcing, interviews, or supporting data for many assertions.

That meant the DNC could not independently verify major pieces of the very autopsy it had just released to explain why the party lost.

That is the kind of process meltdown that turns a post-election review into a public indictment of the people running the party.

As Fox News reported, Khanna did not hold back about what the party got wrong:

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said Sunday that Democrats have failed to connect with working-class voters because the party too often backed status quo establishment candidates unwilling to challenge what he described as a rigged economic system.

Speaking on Meet the Press, Khanna weighed in on a newly released Democratic National Committee autopsy report examining the party’s 2024 election loss and broader struggles with voters.

Khanna said Democrats need to recognize that the status quo has failed, that the economy is lopsided and unfair, and that many working-class and middle-class Americans do not think the system is working for them.

ADVERTISEMENT

He said Democrats too often ran establishment candidates unwilling to call out an economic and political system that failed.

Khanna also said Democrats need an economic message aimed at working-class people who have been shafted, and he said Ken Martin could have handled the autopsy process better even though he did not call for Martin to resign.

The admission landed because it came from inside the Democratic Party, not from a Republican attack ad. The party that claimed to speak for workers was being told by one of its own members that those voters no longer believed the system was working for them.

He added that Democrats need “an economic message aimed at working-class people who have been shafted.”

That is an extraordinary statement from a sitting Democratic congressman, because it validates the exact argument President Trump has been making since 2015.

Trump won because he talked to the people both parties had ignored for decades. He talked about jobs leaving, wages stagnating, borders dissolving, and an elite class that got richer while everyone else fell behind.

Democrats responded by calling those voters bigots.

The autopsy report itself was not much better than the party’s broader messaging.

It reportedly criticized Kamala Harris for writing off rural America and failing to attack Trump with enough negative firepower, as if the problem was not enough mud-slinging rather than having nothing real to offer voters.

ADVERTISEMENT

Former Democratic megadonor John Morgan did not mince words about the whole exercise.

As Fox News reported, Morgan argued Democrats did not need a lengthy report to understand why voters rejected them:

Former Democratic megadonor John Morgan blasted the party’s newly released election autopsy and argued Democrats did not need a lengthy report to understand why voters rejected them.

Morgan, who had previously given more than a million dollars to Democrats, said he did not give a penny once Kamala Harris became the candidate.

Speaking on Jesse Watters Primetime, Morgan argued the autopsy missed the obvious by failing to address progressive social issues that hurt the party.

He listed DEI, woke politics, transgender athletes competing against girls, loose border politics, and Kamala Harris campaign baggage as the real reasons Democrats lost.

The DNC report focused instead on infrastructure, voter registration, state-party support, and listening to certain voter groups.

That contrast is the whole problem in miniature. Voters were reacting to culture-war radicalism, border chaos, and economic pain, while the party machinery was still talking like the answer was better process and more internal infrastructure.

Morgan’s criticism also mattered because it came from a former donor, not a Republican consultant. He was saying that the party’s own postmortem ignored the issues regular voters had already made impossible to miss.

Morgan said the reasons were obvious. He is right.

The DNC report, meanwhile, focused on infrastructure, voter registration, and state-party support instead of addressing the progressive social agenda that drove voters away in droves.

That tells you everything about where the Democratic Party still is mentally.

They produced a 200-page document, slapped a disclaimer on it, sparked a leadership crisis over its release, and still could not bring themselves to say the obvious: voters rejected woke ideology, open borders, and an economy that made life harder for ordinary families.

Ro Khanna at least had the honesty to say the quiet part out loud. Working-class voters were shafted, and Democrats were the ones holding the shovel.

President Trump built a movement by listening to those voters. The DNC autopsy is proof that Democrats still have not figured out how to do the same.

 

Join The Conversation. Leave a Comment.