Donald Trump the Megathread part II - Mod Warning updated in OP 12/2/26

I went through the 200 pages so you don't have to. Some highlights (which is still a long post, granted, but I'm surprised the report hasn't generated any discussion here at all). Again, the DNC never finished the report, so the yellow markings and lines are editor notes in the original. Split boxes are because of page breaks in the PDF.

After an overview of the trends of the last 15 years showing a consistent drop in support from the Obama high of 2008.

i.e. it's not necessarily the policies that are the problem, it's the people running the show: Partially the candidates, but also partially the way the DNC works. The report spends more time on the 'processes' and analytics than the candidates and policies themselves.

On the matter of future trends (And that map I posted earlier).

This matches what has been mentioned before. For example, the swarm of people leaving California and moving to Texas were viewed as a demographic shift in favour of Democrats: Californians vote Democrat, so they will vote Democrat in the new state… Yet the state hasn't shifted that way at all. Turns out that the folks leaving were those not enamoured by California and its policies in the first place, which is why they left.

On the matter of where Democrats outperformed the norm (and definitely outperformed Harris)

Takeaways from comparing State and National elections (i.e. the short version of the previous 20 pages). I think there's a typo where it says "Stein would never break through", should be "Robinson would never break through".

Now, #2 does nothing to those who will say "but mysoginy" as Stein is male. However, note split voting trends further down. I have harped on #3 before. If the Democrats want to win in 2028, if they nominate a coastal city liberal (eg Newsom), they are going to be handing the Republicans a headstart. It may be surmountable (and I would argue Republicans are doing a great job of sabotaging themselves to help them), but a headstart none-the-less. #4 and #6 I have also done to death on Boards. With regards #5, the report indicates that the Harris campaign assumed that new voters would overwhelmingly vote Democrat and thus focused on folks they felt were more worth the effort. Of course, that's not what happened.

Conclusions as a result: (I believe GOTV is "Get out the vote")

The couple of pages on the split ticket voters is informative. These are the true swing voters, not the type who swing from party to party between the elections, but who swing from party to party within the one election. By my count, Harris lost 31 EC votes in states in which the voters were happy to vote for a Democrat woman as their Senator. 42 if you count all the lost split President/Senate states. One EC vote shy of victory (I haven't looked into other statewide offices such as Gov/Lt Gov or AG).

On the hispanic community (Again note that Latinos shifted Democrat in NC)

On the matter of spending. Money obviously isn't the bottom line.

It notes that both Republicans and Democrats spend the majority in old-fashioned ways.

Later on it also points out that Democrats utterly failed to understand alternate communications mechanisms. Digital adverts tended to be broadcast adverts recut and put on social media. Text messages were never conversations or statements of policy, but pretty much exclusively requests for funding. (Which, given the dollar spends above, seems to have worked, to be fair, although given the result of the dollar spends, may have been a wasted effort: Votes win elections, not dollars, the report in an entire chapter on fundraising observes that raising more money than Republicans cannot be an end unto itself.).

On the matter of timing campaigns.

The report returns to this later, and observes that another difference is that Republicans rely more on leveraging locals while Democrats don't.

It also observes later that the Party is not taking enough effort to do face-to-face interactions by advocates and needs to reframe away from telephone calls and the like.

A rather important one-liner.

On the the matter of attack adverts and particularly the "Harris is for they/them" advert. It points out that they are more effective than Democrats are comfortable with, and Democrats should do more of them. Which is one of those things I'm not looking forward to, most of my election material I get is attack adverts anyway. And my kid is getting negative election campaign adverts when he's trying to watch Mark Rober on Youtube.

Note the bit about the framing: Though the context was transgenderism, the argument was "This is how she will spend your tax dollars."

Then there is an utterly massive section on campaign spending processes and priorities, which I don't pretend to undestrand (or care much about).