DNC hopes to highlight success ahead of post-election meeting

The Democratic National Committee is hoping to highlight down-ballot successes last month as it hosts a key post-election meeting and looks to turn the page from its stinging White House loss.

DNC Chair Jaime Harrison wrote in a grassroots memo obtained first by ABC News that while Democrats fell short in the presidential race, beefy and historic investments in down-ballot contests offer a roadmap to success. The party was able to salvage four Senate races in states President-elect Donald Trump won and gain House seats despite headwinds at the top of the ticket.

"As we reflect on the cycle and take stock of where we fell short, it’s equally important to assess what worked. Data shows that the work of the DNC and our partners was effective in beating back what could have been a larger red wave," Harrison wrote.

"In 2024, the DNC made strategic campaign grants in every state party for the first time in history, and delivered record-breaking investments directly to coordinated campaigns in every state -- totaling over $264 million," he added. "These investments yielded results and underscore the importance of continued state party investment…"

The memo marks the first public, thorough dissection by the DNC of the election results, in which Vice President Kamala Harris lost to Trump and Republicans flipped the Senate and kept the House of Representatives.

The document paints a rosy portrait of a party that failed to keep the White House but won Senate races in Trump-won states like Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin, key House races in California and New York, and won a gubernatorial race in North Carolina, a state that has been a white whale for Democrats at the federal level.

Harrison specifically writes that despite the disappointments, Trump was kept below 50% in the popular vote (he still won it), Democrats held Senate seats in states Trump won and cut into Republicans' House margin, and the party was successful in breaking some GOP state legislative majorities and holding on in certain chambers, including its one-seat majority in the Pennsylvania state House.

The memo highlights DNC efforts in all those cases, including voter registration efforts, investments in key demographic groups in Senate races, efforts in New York and California to boost prospects in key House races there and money sent to traditionally noncompetitive states like Alaska and Arkansas to make state legislative gains.

"Notable down-ballot wins in 2024 provide us with a roadmap on what works and where investments mattered most," Harrison wrote.

The memo is being released at the start of a meeting of the Association of State Democratic Committees, where state party leaders will gather to discuss what went right and wrong in November.

The election is sparking a crowded race to lead the DNC, with Harrison not running for reelection as chair, and a broader party reckoning over its identity and whether it should be more centrist, populist, progressive or some combination of the three.

In an interview, Harrison conceded the election was a "mixed bag."

"Of course, we lost the most important election on that ticket, the presidential election, and I'm heartbroken over that," he said.

"But then when we start to look underneath that race and look into the battleground states, and what happened in other races, it's, again, a mixed bag. Donald Trump didn't have the coattails. It was not this landslide vote that many people wanted to say that it was on Election Day because Democrats still won in many of those battleground states."

Harrison cited several reasons behind the "mixed" results.

On the one hand, Harris faced a historically short runway after President Joe Biden left the race in July, combined with economic headwinds and a liberal media ecosystem that still struggles to match Republican heavyweights like Fox News. Trump, Harrison said, had emerged as a "cultural" figure over the course of nine years who was able to put together an expansive coalition.

"I think time definitely was a part of it," Harrison said. "I thought that she was going to be become sort of a cultural figure. Just seeing the early energy, I need to tell you, man, just that convention alone, I felt like there was something turning. But it didn't go full circle. And that's something that we got to figure out. Why not? Did we change the message? What did we do in order not to have it go full circle?"

"I don't know if we need to find our own Joe Rogan [the influential podcaster who interviewed then endorsed Trump days before the election], and I've heard that from a number of folks, but I think we need to make sure that we're in in all those spaces," he added of whether Democrats need to expand their media strategy in traditional and non-traditional outlets.

Still, Harrison found positive signs in a state party infrastructure that Democrats had worked hard to revive after years of atrophy in recent years.

"We got to continue those investments. We can't go back to the post-Obama years in which we minimized the amount of resources that the DNC sent to state parties," he said. "We are still trying to work our way back from that point in time. So, now, it's about focusing on continuing moving forward."

Still, the meeting isn't taking place in a vacuum, and the present could get in the way of discussions about the future.

Biden dropped a bombshell Sunday night when he announced that he was pardoning his son, Hunter, leading to a flood of Democratic criticism Monday over his intervention in Justice Department proceedings.

However, Harrison said he believed that the ASDC meeting would stay on track.

"The president is a good man, he's a decent man, he's a just person, and he always tries to do the best thing, and this is, I believe, the best thing at this point in time," Harrison said. "Almost to a person, the Democrats that I've talked to, grassroots activists, Democrats, are leading. This won't consume that."