Why Is the DNC Hiding Its Own 2024 Autopsy?

Crooked Con is coming up right after the election, and we have just added a bunch more great names to the lineup. We've got Governor J.B. Pritzker coming, Senator Chris Murphy, and then over from the House side, Ilhan Omar, Robert Garcia, Sarah Jacobs, Jamie Raskin, Sarah McBride. We also have Carlos Eduardo Espina, Simone Sanders Townsend, Eugene Daniels, David Pakman, Jessica Tarloff, Heather McGee, and then all the other people that we've announced on the website, plus more to come. Great list. Check out the full lineup and get tickets right now at CrookedCon.com. We'd love to see you there. That's CrookedCon.com. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. So yesterday I interviewed Ken Martin, the DNC chair, and for scheduling reasons, we had originally planned on just keeping it on our YouTube channel, but because the interview turned out to be much spicier than we had anticipated, we're dropping it here for all of you. Just to set up what happened, Ken reached out last week asking if he could have a chance to respond to criticism coming from some of us here at Crooked about the DNC's finances after it was reported that the Democratic National Committee ended March with $13.9 million in cash, $18.9 million in cash, and $3.3 million in debt for a total of negative $4.4 million. The RNC, by contrast, has $116.7 million in cash with no debt. Ken had also mentioned our past criticism of his decision not to release the full 200-page report that the DNC had conducted on what went wrong in the 2024 election, which he had promised to do when he ran for DNC chair, and again, when he sat down with me last August. We, of course, said, sure, we'd love to have him on and hash it out, so we did. And I'll just say, the reason I spent so much time asking him about the report, also known as the 2024 autopsy, is not because I want to relitigate every miserable detail of that election or figure out who to blame. It's because of this. Ken and the DNC supposedly commissioned a massive project where they interviewed party leaders, strategists, organizers, activists, in all 50 states about the 2024 election. What went wrong? What went right? What they learned from voters, what they learned from the reams of data they had access to, what they learned about how to make sure we win next time. They supposedly did this for almost a year. They supposedly wrote up a 200-and-some-odd-page report. And then Ken Martin announced in December that actually DNC leadership wasn't going to let anyone see what they found, and they were instead going to tell the rest of us the lie. The lessons that they, DNC leadership, took from the report. Because, well, that's what I wanted to find out. Now, Democrats have massively overperformed in nearly every special and off-year election we've had since 2024. We have covered that extensively on the show. Thanks to Donald Trump's popularity, the party is in an excellent position to not just take back the House in the November midterms, but maybe even the Senate. But, as we learned in 2018, and 2022, midterm elections and special elections and off-year elections are just very different from presidential elections. Different voters, different turnout, different stakes. Uh, 2028 will be much harder, just like 2024 was harder than 2022, just like 2020 was harder than 2018, and so on and so forth. The Democratic Party's popularity is still at record lows. And the idea that we shouldn't have access to a full report about what went wrong last time based on interviews with some of the very same people who will be responsible for winning next time is absolutely bonkers to me. That autopsy isn't the most important thing, but it could have at least formed the basis for the open, honest, and yes, messy debate we absolutely need to have about how to win in 2028. Not just a few of us, not just Ken Martin and the DNC leadership, not just the party inside, who think they know better than the rest of us rubes. All of us, who not only want to win, but will have to live with the consequences of what happens if we lose. We should all get a say, too. So, that's what I tried to ask Ken about. And, uh, you guys can judge his answers for yourselves. Here's Ken Martin. Ken Martin, thanks for doing this. Yeah, thanks for having me back on. John, it was great to see you the other night at the Grindr party of all parties. It was amazing. I know, I wish they hadn't run out of alcohol by the time I arrived, but that's neither here nor there. Quick bit of context for listeners. This all came about because you expressed some frustration about criticism of the DNC coming from our direction. So, I appreciate you coming on to talk about it directly. I'll just say up front, we share the goal of making sure Democrats win everywhere, especially the White House in 2028. I also very much understand you've got one of the hardest jobs in the world, one of the hardest jobs in politics that you took at an especially tough time for the party. But I do want to press you on some specific things because I think the stakes are too high not to. Does that sound fair? Sounds great, John. Thank you. I appreciate it. So, I want to start with the 2024 autopsy, which you call an after-action review. When you won the chairmanship in February of 25, you criticized the DNC's refusal to release their 2016 autopsy as exactly what not to do. You said, quote, was there any utility in doing that? And then promised your 2024 autopsy would be different. Your exact quote was, of course it will be released. Why did you change your mind on that? Well, look, I mean, what I said all along, even when I ran for this position, is that we were going to focus on the things that will help us win the upcoming election, right? Making sure that we learn the right lessons that could help inform our victories. And that's what we've done. We said this when we sent out the press release back in November, saying we weren't going to release the report. We were going to actually keep our focus on those lessons. And we released those lessons. We continue to do that. And it's important for me, instead of navel-gazing and looking backwards and trying to re-litigate 2024, I don't know about you, John, but I don't have a time machine. I don't think you do. No one does. So we can't change what happened in 24. The only thing we can do is actually change what happens in the future, including the 26 election cycle, 28 and beyond. That means we do need to learn the lessons. We need to make sure they help inform our decisions that we're making. And we've been releasing them. We released them just a couple months ago in our playbook, which if you want to look at that, go to dnc.org backslash playbook, and you can get an example of some of the lessons. We've been releasing them with our donors and with activists and party leaders. We've been talking about what those lessons are. And we've actually been putting those lessons into action. And so it's not completely accurate to say that we didn't release that. Where we're keeping our focus is on the lessons that can actually help us win. But on the other hand, this show in August, you told me this about releasing the review, quote, we have to do it to give people who invested so much time, energy, and money a sense of what happened and why we lost. Correct. Especially why we lost. So what changed between August and December? I understand there are lessons, but those are not the full report. Why not release the full report? What's in the report that you wouldn't want to publicize? Yeah, there's no smoking gun in the report. And I know that's what everyone's so eager to learn. I mean, the smoking, guess what, John? But if there's no smoking gun, why wouldn't you just release it then? Because we want to keep the focus on the lessons. Because what ends up happening here is that people, of course, want to weaponize the report in a way to look backwards, to point fingers, place blame in a way that actually doesn't keep us focused on the upcoming election. But instead, the navel-gazing of focusing backwards actually takes us backwards. We're 189 days from this election, John. What we don't need to be focused on is action. We don't need to be actually re-litigating 2024. What we need to do is learn the lessons of 24 and the years preceding that can help us win this upcoming election. That's why we've been releasing them. That's why we've been focused in on actually putting those lessons into action. And there's nothing that I told you in August that is inaccurate. We've been sharing those lessons out with donors. We've been talking about this with party leaders and activists and others and organizations and campaigns. It's no surprise to, and I get it. I get why people are obsessed with it because there's various groups and organizations and people who think there's some sort of smoking gun in there. Guess what, John? In the third closest presidential election in the last hundred years, everything mattered. There's nothing that can impact that election. But why did you spend the money going to 50 states, doing all these interviews, doing all this stuff, and doing this report in the first place if you weren't going to release the full results of it? I don't get why. I don't get why just you and some of the senior DNC people get to see it, but not most of the DNC members who are, you know, state party chairs. I mean, you know, more than a dozen DNC members told NBC just the other week they want it released, including Congresswoman Delia Ramirez and North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton. And Anderson said, quote, genuinely, what did you all find that we did not? How did you answer that question? What we found is the things we've been telling them, between them, both Anderson Delia, other folks who have concerns about it. We've shared all of the lessons with them, right? And so again, I think, John, the reality is you're proving my point here, right? People are obsessed about this in a way that continues to turn them away from wanting to focus on the lessons and instead thinking that there's some sort of smoking gun in here that's going to give them the one single reason that Kamala Harris lost the election or the one single thing that we should have done differently that's going to actually help us win in the future. There is no one single thing that cost Kamala the election. There is no one single thing that we can do to help us win the upcoming election. There's a number of lessons for sure that will help us win in 26 and beyond. But again, I understand what you're saying, John. We'll just have to agree to disagree on this because we have already started to put those lessons into action. I'm proud of the results of what we've seen over the last year and a half. Since I've been elected, we have significant wind at our back and we're going to continue to move forward. And we're going to continue to put those lessons we've learned into action. And I hope others will start to do the same. Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out because it doesn't it certainly doesn't seem like anyone's looking for one single silver bullet because it's a 200 page report. So I feel like on a 200 page report, there's a lot of lessons for everyone to take. And if you're going to operationalize it, then I think the question is, like, are you operationalizing on behalf of people who who didn't actually get to see the report? So, like, do they know what they're agreeing to when they operate operationalize lessons from the report if they haven't been able to read the report? John, you're proving the point. What's the point? The the the obsession on the report without actually focusing in on the lessons. People believe there's something there's some sort of magic silver bullet in there that's going to solve all of our ills at the Democratic Party. There's not. And I understand. I don't think I don't think there's going to be a magic silver bullet, though. Who thinks that? No one thinks it's good. That's a such a no one thinks there's a magic silver bullet. It's a 200 page report. You interviewed people in 50 states. You spent a lot of donor money on it. I think people are probably wondering like on it. We don't spend a lot of donor money on that. And that's just inaccurate. You spent a couple hundred thousand dollars on it, right? No, we did not. It was a free report. We did not spend a couple hundred thousand dollars on that. The person and people who are involved in it were not paid. To do this work. And so I will just say that's that's inaccurate, John. So I appreciate I'm not sure where you would even get that number. And so did you have some some sort of record that shows we spent any money on that? I've seen I've seen reporting that you that you did spend money on it. Yeah, for sure. OK, well, that's that's inaccurate. OK, the person who has to do this is an unpaid advisor to the DNC. And so I appreciate listen, I appreciate where it's coming from, John. But let's just trade in facts on this. Right. The reality is, as we did talk to, you know, hundreds of people. It was an exhaustive exercise to really get at what are those key lessons. And I want to be very clear, there's nothing that changed from what I said on the campaign trail to now, which is when you were on the campaign trail and you talked about definitely releasing an autopsy and criticized the DNC for not releasing an autopsy in 2016. In your mind, you thought I'm going to do one, but only release certain lessons and not the full report. No, what I said at the time is exactly what I've been saying now, which is we have to focus on the things that help us win the future elections. We have to focus on those lessons. We have to do this exercise, by the way, of doing of conducting this analysis so that we actually learn what happened, not just in 24, but in the years preceding that, John. And so that's where our focus is. I mean, you know, the challenge is, you know, think about this as an executive summary of, you know, like you said, a 200 page document. And I think what we've put together and what we learn, we are sharing with people so they have full insight into, you know, what we actually need to course correct on as we go into these final 189 days left and into the future. So again, are you going to release? You mentioned the executive summary. Are you going to release an official executive summary? Make it make that public. We've been releasing that, John. That's what I've been saying to you. Well, you said you said there's the Democratic playbook, the playbook that you said you can sign up for in DNC for sure. But I know that, you know, NBC News said that before Easter about a month ago, you told DNC officers on a call to expect an executive summary in short order. Offer says on that call told NBC they still haven't received one. You told a North Carolina DNC member who was drafting a resolution to force the report's release that a summary was forthcoming and he backed off based on that promise. So you've been saying coming weeks on the executive, like when can people when can people expect an accurate summary? We've already been sharing that with a number of folks and we'll continue to share it with folks, including the DNC and other people. The reality is, is we're not hiding the ball on this. We have been sharing those things out. Happy to get you over, you know, what we have been sharing out, John. The reality is, is that there's no smoking gun here. And as much as people would like to keep focusing in on those pieces, what they're ignoring is that we're sharing out the lessons. We have been incorporating those and we have actually been putting those lessons into action, which I'm most proud of. Look, we're 189 days away from this election. You said on the top end of this that you what you care most about is helping us to win elections. Okay, let's focus on the elections coming up, John. You know, I mean, I want to I want to focus on winning them. I feel like an autopsy on what went wrong. And when we lost the popular vote in all those states in 2024 and figuring out what went wrong based on a big report is pretty important for everyone to know. I've spent my my entire career, John, as you know, since 1990 winning elections up and down the ballot, both in Minnesota and across the country. I appreciate that. And I'm happy. I'm happy to talk to you about winning elections. If you want to actually talk about elections, I'm happy to talk to you about that. But again, you're proving the point that I think many folks I think are frustrated in this party, which is people want to turn backwards to relitigate the 2024 election to point fingers to place blame to to to want to learn lessons. Well, listen, to win elections, if they want to win elections, I'm happy to share what we learn in the way of the lessons on why we lost the 24 election and the years preceding that. Happy to share those. We're sharing those out with everyone. But again, this conversation, doesn't help us actually win elections. All it does is continue to turn people inward. What we need to do is focus on the work we need to do in 189 days. Learn the lessons. And I'm happy to go over what those lessons are. I'm happy to go over them with anyone who wants to talk about them, John. But what I'm not going to do is release a report that turns everyone backwards, trying to either point fingers or place blame and actually ignore their own responsibility in helping us to fix the situation. The reality is, is, you know, we all have a responsibility, yourself, myself, everyone, and actually learning those lessons, focusing on the upcoming election, putting them into action so we don't repeat those same mistakes. That's what we've been focused on, John. Right now, the midterms are the biggest story in American politics. But however they go, the Democratic Party is going to have to do some serious soul searching. Join us. Washington, D.C., the second annual CrookedCon. It's going to be the Positive America hosts and some of the smartest people in politics. We're going to try to answer some big questions. Stuff like, if we won, how did we win? If we lost, how could we possibly have lost? And with 2028 around the corner, where do we go from here? If you believe in democracy, community, and fighting for the future, now's the time to grab your tickets to CrookedCon 2026. Head to crookedcon.com to get your tickets now. So Steve Shale, a longtime Democratic strategist who's run Florida for the party, told the Washington Examiner that there's a, quote, financial penalty specifically tied to burying the autopsy because donors want a clear accounting before recommitting. The DNC is entering April with negative net cash on hand. So even on your own, you know, standard of does this help us win? Is it possible that the autopsy decision is actually costing you the money? You need to win. That's just inaccurate, John. And I'm sure you follow the campaign finance reports like I do. We raised $105 million in 2025, a record amount of money for the first year. You don't have, you're not, you don't, you're not have negative cash on hand right now. You don't, you don't have debt that's negative cash on hand. We also, we do have debt, John. And that's because I took out a loan last year to make sure we can make deep investments. You know what we've been doing, John? We've raised a record amount of money, $105 million. It's the most raised for the first year chair of any DNC chair in the history of this party. And you know what's great? What's, you know, what's great about it. We raised in 2017, which is a analogous year, a year right after a presidential loss, Tom Perez raised $40 million less than what we raised this year. He didn't have, he didn't have the debt that you guys have. Yes, he did. He had $76 million in debt. And so my point, my point to you, my point to you is this, John. Okay. I mean, we can trade in all of this, but let's actually trade in facts. $105 million was raised. 85 million of it came from grassroots donors, which is a record amount of grassroots donations raised in the history of the Democratic party. That is shows the energy that's out there. The average contribution is $51, by the way, John. And you know, we raised more than any of the other committees last year, the DS, the DCCC. And I will just tell you this, all of the Republican committees raised more than the DNC. And so that's just a of coming out of a year when you lose the presidential election, when you're the party that's out of power, of course you're going to not raise as much money as the Republicans. But to suggest that we're not raising money is inaccurate. We raised $32 million in the first quarter. But what we're doing that's a little different, John, is we're spending it. We're raising it and we're spending it. Because one of the lessons we learned- You're spending more than you have. I mean, so you guys have 13.9 million cash on hand, right? I'm reading the report, 13.9 million cash on hand, 18.3 million in debt. So that's roughly negative $4.4 million. And I know it's a tough environment for the party out of power, but the DSCC and the DCCC and the Senate candidates have plenty of money. They're all doing great. So it seems like this is an issue unique to the DNC. That's not accurate, John. What part is not accurate? The reality is we're spending money as we raise it to win. In elections and to build infrastructure. We have invested significant amounts of money, record investments in Virginia and New Jersey, investments in Mississippi in their state legislative races to help them flip the Republican supermajority in their state legislature, investments in the Miami mayoral race to help us win a Democratic elected mayor in the first time in 30 years, investments in the PSC races in Georgia to help us win the first two non-federal elected. Races, statewide races in 20 years in their history. You know, investments throughout the country, up and down the ballot, and investments in infrastructure, including the largest investments ever in a 50-state party strategy where we're making the biggest investments in building out the infrastructure of our state and local party committees. You know, one of the lessons we learned, by the way, John, from the last election is that we waited too long to spend money. In fact, the Republican Party, starting in 2020, right after Biden won that race, the Democratic Party packed up the campaign infrastructure. Trump and the Republicans kept going. They kept spending money. They kept organizing. They kept communicating with voters. We did not. And as a result, they had a three-and-a-half-year-long head start going into the 2024 election. We had 10 million Democrats who actually chose the couch instead of voting in 2024. And part of the reason why is because we weren't communicating with them early and often. The Democratic Party decided last year to start doing. We have our local listener program that's already engaging through year-round organizing those voters who dropped off in 2024. You have to spend money to win elections. And one of the lessons we learned is if we wait. Now, look, I know you came up in a certain time and day in politics, but the old conventional wisdom, John, it doesn't fly anymore. The old conventional wisdom is that you waited to make investments until the final three months of the election because that's when people were going to vote. And that's when people were paying attention. Well, guess what? That's bullshit. It's shown. We have to start early. We have to build that infrastructure. We have to flex that muscle early of having conversations with voters so that we actually position ourselves to win. Now, are you criticizing me for spending money early? Because that seems to be what the thing is. And guess what? No, no, no. I think it's great that you're spending money early. And I think it's very important to invest in state parties. I think a 50-state strategy is extremely important. But we're talking about two different things. We're talking about spending money and raising money. And you raised $11.4 million in March. The RNC raised double that in March. And so if you're going to spend that much money, obviously, you have to also raise the money, too, because otherwise, the difference between investment and just outrunning your costs and taking on a loan because of that doesn't seem like much of a difference to me. It's not outrunning our costs, John, because we're able to make these investments all throughout the country. And race after race, in our state party infrastructure, in our local party infrastructure, if we weren't able to keep up in terms of building out this infrastructure, then there would be a problem. We won over 90% of the elections on the ballot. And most of them, if not all of them, we had a direct involvement in. And I just say this to you, John, because it was a bet we made. And I get it. Again, all the folks in D.C., what they like to, they seem obsessed about, and they, they, they spend a lot of time thinking about is how much money do people have on hand versus actually what are you doing to build out the infrastructure to win? And what is the role of a political party, John? At the end of the day, our job is to build infrastructure that our candidates can tap into to do the things that isn't the first, isn't the most important job of a DNC chair to go and raise money. And obviously, like, no, that's what the job of the unfortunately, the job of the D.C. is to build infrastructure. It's to win. And guess what I've been doing the last year and a half? Win. And guess what I did for 14 years in a very purple state? Win, John. And I'm just telling you right now, I think you and others who continue to bet against the DNC keep betting because that guess what? Here's a reality, John, we're winning and we're winning because I'm, I'm defying the investments you're making or not. I mean, obviously there's a difference between off-year elections and midterm elections and what it's going to take to build the kind of infrastructure we need to win in 2028, right? I mean, I just think that that's, that's it. You've talked a lot about investing in state parties. The headline number is $20,000 a month per state. My understanding is that also includes like the Democratic Party of Guam and the party of the Northern Mariana Islands who get the basically the same check as Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or North Carolina. I get that every state and territory has DNC members. Every one of them voted in the DNC election you won, but it's also a real chunk of money that's flowing to places without federal races. And so I just wonder if you have this much debt is like that the right allocation of money to be giving it to state parties in Guam and Northern Mariana Islands when, you know, Axios reported that there's also contemplating layoffs at the DNC. There's no, again, John, you're just throwing out a bunch of garbage. We've never contemplated layoffs at the DNC. I haven't laid anyone off since I've been a DNC chair. And so I just want to be very clear. Uh, with you again and your listeners, because you're just repeating garbage, uh, you know, pot shots at the DNC. I I'm used to taking the pot shots by the way, you know, and I think the mistake that you and others make is, you know, somehow, um, I, I just don't care. I came to this job for one thing, which is to win. And if it wasn't, but you think that state, but you think the state party allocation to like the Guam and everything is, is, is, is worthwhile allocation of funds. I think it is a worthwhile allocation because when we organize everywhere, we can win everywhere. And it's important for us not to just focus on federal power at the expense of state and local power power. This is where I'm challenging the conventional wisdom of all these smart people in Washington, DC here, which is that the only thing that matters is control of Congress and the presidency. My job is to help us win everywhere, to build power up and down the ballot throughout the country, including in our territories. And so you and I can just disagree on whether or not those are investments that are worthwhile. I believe they are worthwhile. It's important for our party values everywhere. There's Democrats and we're going to continue to do that. And so, um, whether you think that's a worthwhile investment or not, that's fine. Um, you know, you can take your check back, uh, if you don't believe it's a good investment, John, but let me just say this, uh, the, the role of the democratic party is to build infrastructure everywhere so that we can win. Let me give you a couple of examples of what that infrastructure is. You know, our voter file and our organizing tools and our data, every candidate, whether they're running for school board or they're running for president, it relies on that. We spent over $10 million a year on that, John. That's a critical piece of the infrastructure that people rely on without the DNC. Uh, they would have to do that on their own. All of these candidates, our voter protection and legal infrastructure that we build every committee and every candidate relies on us to be out there filing lawsuits and protecting the vote. We filed over a thousand lawsuits, which is a record number of lawsuits over the last year alone, right? Including being lead plaintiffs in many of the big lawsuits, challenging Trump's executive orders. Uh, this is a piece of the infrastructure people rely on. Right now, the midterms are the biggest story in American politics, but however they go, the democratic party is going to have to do some serious soul searching. Join us Washington, DC, November 5th through 7th, the second annual crooked con. We're going to try to answer some big questions, stuff like, if we won, how did we win? If you believe in democracy, community, and fighting for the future, now's the time to grab your tickets to crooked con at 2026, head to crooked con.com to get your tickets now. We'll be right back. you mentioned the voter file um there's been a talk that a meaningful chunk of the dnc's debt traces to the the committee buying the harris campaign's voter file is that accurate did you guys buy the the harris campaign's voter file no that's not that didn't happen no you're talking about buying a fundraising list but that's not a voter file the fundraising list yeah did you did you of course you purchased that it was i was just wondering about the rationale for that because it feels like the dnc and the harris campaign were operating off largely the same data infrastructure during the campaign so you're buying the list you're confusing two things john data infrastructure and fundraising list those are separate things and i again but even on the fundraising list you guys didn't work out like you that was additive their fundraising list for 6.5 million dollars was additive to that that was a good investment we purchased that list and let me just say this john that um that happens all the time in campaigns and elections as you know oh i know it's just a big chunk of money that's why i was just wondering well as you know john that happens all the time so it's not it's not unique to this dnc it's not unique to prior dnc chairs it's not unique to campaigns or elections frankly campaigns and elections campaigns at the end of an election sell their list to cover their debt and so there's nothing nothing new about that john and of course that's one of the biggest lists and the most valuable list out there it's a great investment for the dnc i'm trying to actually help us raise money so we can compete so we can win and that was uh not only a great investment it's already paid for itself uh you know and we're glad to be able to do that and you know we buy lists all the time that's what people do in this uh business yeah look look i here's the reason i'm just being so tough about all of this i just think that um what i have seen happen before is especially um in off-year elections midterm elections when we have the wind at our back and i feel great about the midterms i feel really excited about the midterms i feel really excited about the midterms i feel really excited about the off-year elections too as we head towards 2028 look i i i saw this in 2022 we did well enough in the midterms and uh democratic insiders by the administration everyone else were saying you know what this proves that we're going to win in 2024 and we're in great shape and i just and god i hope so because i think we need to win 2028 more than anything but it is it it concerns me that i see two things one this uh autopsy which you campaigned on releasing and and i know you're releasing lessons but are hiding still plenty of the details in the autopsy and i just can't figure out what details that are in there that you don't want out there because you don't trust people with because they're gonna i guess argue about them because it feels like we really need a robust discussion about where the party's headed not just pundits like me but the state party chairs and the dnc committee members who are asking you to release it they're asking you to release it i know you want to keep focusing on that and that's fine well and i'm saying that and i do think that that affects the fun and the fundraising isn't going well either so i feel like that's fundraising that is just completely inaccurate john i mean you had you had a great first you had a great first year in 2025 and we've had a great first quarter 32 million dollars we raised in the first quarter we raised four million dollars in march than tom perez did in 2018 we have that's excluding that though that's we have 50 percent more cash on hand than tom perez did but you're excluding debt you don't have 50 more cash on hand if you include your debt john we do because at the end of the day we can pay that debt off whenever the hell we want i i could hold that debt until the end of the year so so the reality is there's nothing that's holding me back in terms of the cash i have the cash on hand i have to spend it on elections i can carry that debt all the way through the end of this year and beyond if i want so that's just inaccurate i know you know campaigns but you're just spewing stuff out that's just wrong i mean i'm just i'm saying that i saw that talking point about 50 percent more and it's based on it's not a talking point we raised 32 million dollars and that's just wrong so i'm just i'm saying that i saw that talking point about 50 in the first quarter okay we have 15 million dollars on hand we're able to spend that money on continuing to build our infrastructure and to help us win elections okay and we're and we've continued to raise money nothing has slowed down in fact the fundraising has picked up significantly since even the last november's elections in 2025 so listen and i know the grassroots fundraising has been great i i know that i concede that for sure i just there's plenty of reports about this i've talked to people about this i've talked to people about this i've talked to people about this that that a lot of the big donors still have not come off the sidelines and part of the reason is that there's a trust issue based partly on the autopsy yeah i i'm just not seeing that john and i i appreciate that and and and you know um uh i don't believe that to be the case maybe you're talking to donors that i'm not i i highly doubt it but the donors i'm talking to who are holding back uh they're not holding back because they're frustrated with me and they're not holding back because they're frustrated with the dnc uh just the opposite and so i'm just saying that's just so i think people see that we are actually putting into action the lessons we've learned we're actually building the infrastructure we need we're competing up in the uh down the ballot we're making the investments throughout the country to make sure that we're organizing everywhere i mean part of the challenge john is we've talked about this on the show before um that this party for years and this is why i ran for it has had a very myopic vision of just focusing in on one campaign cycle one candidate uh one campaign and one campaign and one campaign and one campaign at the expense of a long-term strategy and for us to break out of that we actually have to have a long-term strategy and that requires us to build through the lens of building long-term infrastructure and so you know you're damned if you do damned if you don't if you throw all your eggs into one basket which is one campaign or one campaign cycle then you've built nothing permanent or if you do as i am right which is to start building the permanent infrastructure we need to have a long-term strategy then you get blamed because you you don't have enough cash on hand to compete with the republicans well the reality is we've been competing with the republicans and building the long-term infrastructure at the same time and so what i would ask you to do is just think about this differently the old conventional wisdom of how we do campaigns i came in here and as i said i'm challenging that conventional wisdom i'm challenging the idea that we just invest in the final three months at the expense of a long-term strategy i'm challenging the uh the conventional wisdom of the long-term strategy that we just focus on federal power at the expense of state and local power right i am challenging the conventional wisdom that we just focus on seven battleground states at the expense of the rest of this country so i get that that frustrates people john but guess what it will pay dividends it already is both in the short term and it will pay dividends in the long term as this map shifts underneath of our feet in the next four to six years so i say all this i get where your frustration comes from right but as i said you know and i and i get it you know there are people including you and others who are in a different place on this chairs race but since i've come here i have won and you can't ignore that fact we have won i would go and ask you to talk to eileen higgins the mayor of of um miami i would go and ask you to talk to alicia johnson and peter hubbard the new psc commissioners in uh georgia i would go and ask you to talk to mikey sheryl in new jersey i would go and ask you and talk to abigail spanberger in virginia i would go to ask you to talk to mikey sheryl in new jersey i would go and ask you to talk to abigail to talk to taylor amet in fort worth texas and many many other campaigns and candidates that we've helped over the course of the last year and a half because what they will tell you is that the dmc was critically involved in those races was that a good investment i suppose by some people standards no because we just don't we're not hoarding our money for the november election to win back control of congress well guess what i just i want to make sure you guys have enough money and i know there's you know fundraising issues that you're being you know i'm not rnc raised nearly double than you guys so i want to make sure you have enough money and you know the ds and the d trip and everyone else and the senate candidates are raising a whole bunch of money and matching republicans so i just want to make sure you guys have the money not matching as well there's not matching republicans every every republican committee outraced their counterpart the rnc not by double as you guys in the rnc but i i hear you they didn't they didn't outrace us by double either we raised 32 million dollars to their 56 million or 54 million i'm going i'm going by the march numbers which is 11 to 21 but i hear you i hear you um all right well i appreciate you i appreciate you coming on i appreciate you answering these questions and i just i i do hope it was interesting to learn that you do still plan on releasing an executive summary of the full after action report publicly to people who want it that that is coming i i soon i i guess we've been releasing those we'll continue to release we've been releasing them you've been releasing an executive summary or you've been doing individual lessons we've been releasing those lessons the lessons are the summary that's we've been releasing those since the beginning of this year and briefing after briefing and we publish them in our playbook as i mentioned we'll continue to release them and so if anyone wants to see some of that work already go to dnc.org backslash playbook and you can see how we're already putting those lessons into action we'll continue to do that john i mean that was my commitment when i ran and that was my commitment when we talked last is that we were going to help make sure people understood what lessons we needed to learn going into this election we'll continue to do that so thank you thank you uh thank you ken martin for joining as always thank you john if you want to listen to pod save 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