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FEATURING INDIA WALTON - After many months of obstruction, the Democratic National Committee finally released an unfinished draft of an assessment that was meant to dissect the party’s 2024 failure in winning the White House and control of Congress. Critics from all corners roundly dismissed the DNC autopsy as incomplete, and a reflection of precisely why the party has failed to hold on to power in spite of upholding ideals backed by most Americans. 

India Walton is an advocate for criminal legal reform, improving access to healthcare, safe staffing, and affordable housing. She was the 2021 Democratic nominee for mayor of Buffalo, New York and is currently a Senior Strategist with RootsAction and RootsAction Education Fund. Roots Action recently released its own report on the 2024 election. She spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about the DNC report and RootsAction's own autopsy.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Let's first talk about the DNC's report before we compare it to what Roots Action put out. What exactly was this report? It was not finished. I understand someone named Paul Rivera authored it. Why was the DNC dragging its feet into releasing this? It just seems like a big mess all around, a reflection, as I mentioned, of the mess the Democratic Party is in. 

India Walton: Yeah. I completely agree. So before the DNC released its own report, Roots Action released an autopsy, but what we said was not anything that wasn't common knowledge. So we know that the Democrats lost to Trump because there was a failure to denounce a genocide happening. 

There was a failure of a mainstream economic platform that prioritized working people, which is the majority of us. There was a lack of communication to young people. And in the releasing of the autopsy, the same things were missing. So it's like you are making a report about why you lost, but it appears to be that you still don't even understand why that happened. 

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