MILBANK: Kamala Lost Because of ‘The Backlash Against a Black Woman’

Jorge Bonilla
May 24th, 2026 3:18 PM

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After a lengthy delay, the Democratic National Committee released (and immediately disavowed, per Chair Ken Martin) its long-awaited autopsy of the 2024 presidential election. Some in the Elitist Media prefer to see what they want to see, as opposed to what was actually in the report.

Watch as Dana Milbank, formerly of The Washington Post and now with NOTUS (News of the United States), fabricates racial animus as an underlying reason for Vice President Kamala Harris losing the election:

DANA MILBANK: Why did Democrats lose? Well it --it's like Captain Obvious, right? Why did incumbent parties all around the world lose at that time?

BRAZILE: Thank you.

MILBANK: It was high inflation, and that was coupled with the problems of, you know, Biden staying in the race too long, and the backlash against a Black woman being the Democratic nominee. There you have it. Pretty simple right there.

Rotating host Jon Karl rotated to the DNC autopsy after opening the panel discussion with the DoJ anti-weaponization fund, which has been like catnip to the Elitist Media. Former DNC chair Donna Brazile would have loved to talk about anything else, but she ultimately dismissed the half-finished product as a “cold case”. 

Milbank then pivots to his fabricated cause, his “backlash against a black woman”, despite President Trump winning substantial shares of the minority vote. Milbank also cited President Joe Biden staying in the race too long, despite that not being listed in the autopsy, either. 

When watching the video, note Milbank’s egregious pandering as he gestures towards Brazile. All for naught, as Karl immediately corrects Milbank, stating that Biden’s age as a factor was not mentioned in the autopsy. Nor was Harris’s race, for that matter. In fact, the autopsy contains only 5 mentions of the word “black:” two of those are mentions of opposition research alleging NC Senate candidate Mark Robinson called himself a “Black Nazi.” Two additional mentions mention black people as part of a cohort where Harris suffered steep losses, and finally, a mention of the Black PAC. 

Whatever “backlash” happened against Harris in 2024 occurred in Milbank’s fertile imagination. Was Harris not making it to Christmas of 2019 for the 2020 Democrat primary also reflective of this “backlash?” One is left to wonder whether at some point the Elitist Media will self-reflect with their own autopsy of what they’ve gotten wrong over the past several years- especially the Trump years. But we won’t be holding our breath for it.

Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned segment as aired on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, May 24th, 2026:

JON KARL: Do you mind, Donna, if we turn to the Democrat, the DNC autopsy about what went wrong in 2024? I mean, just to get a subject near and dear to your heart.

DONNA BRAZILE: You know, I would -- I would much rather talk about phase one of these so-called Iran settlement. Of course, there are so many other things I would -- I would even like to talk about --

KARL: So, what --

BRAZILE: -- the NBA playoff. Look, it is -- it's a cold case, right? It's a cold case. Somebody want to re-examine the body. And you, you get this forensic examination with no summary, no conclusion, no footnotes.

Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic Party, was absolutely right to distance himself from it. In fact, it should be -- it should've been redacted, like the -- most of the Epstein's files. It should be put in, in a time capsule -- capsule.

KARL: Redact like the Epstein files.

BRAZILE: I would never give it a bottle of wine. It is just utterly embarrassing. But here's what Democrats want. Democrats want a party that fights, a party that can rebuild and regain the trust of the American people, that can focus on the issues that the American people care about.

This is an inside the Beltway, kind of like who did this, and I'm not going to become part of the circle fighting squad.

KARL: But wait a minute, though. I mean, Dana, don't you need to learn the lessons of the previous failures, not to repeat them? Is that not a --

BRAZILE: There's no body to look at.

DANA MILBANK: I -- maybe you -- maybe you want to learn from them, but I don't think this achieved that. Now, we can stipulate that this would not have happened --

KARL: Was the blank conclusion the first hint?

MILBANK: This -- this would never have happened in Donna Brazile's DNC. I mean, what are the finances there so bad that they couldn't actually hire a proper medical examiner to do this autopsy? It's like they got this butcher to come in and do this half-baked report.

I -- so I -- I don't understand the whole concept. I don't understand why it was released. It's also like why did Democrats lose? Well it --it's like Captain Obvious, right? Why did incumbent parties all around the world lose at that time?

BRAZILE: Thank you.

MILBANK: It was high inflation, and that was coupled with the problems of, you know, Biden staying in the race too long, and the backlash against a Black woman being the Democratic nominee.

There you have it. Pretty simple right there.

KARL: But wait a minute. As I understand it, the report does not address Biden's age and that decision.

And Ramesh, you pointed out it uses the word inflation, but it doesn't actually talk about inflation.

RAMESH PONNURU: That's right. It -- it -- it uses the word inflation only when it's talking about campaign spending. So, once you hear it which is -- which is --

KARL: Which -- which is what Americans care about.

PONNURU: Right, exactly. Donna's absolutely right. It's inside the Beltway. It's like the consultants talking about what consultants did and how they spent the money.

KARL: Yes.

PONNURU: And not about any of the issues that kept a majority of Americans from voting with the Democrats.

And I -- and I do disagree because I don't think it's totally obvious. I think that Democrats do need to grapple with, in particular, the way they mishandled immigration during the Biden administration and the way the public reacted to that. And the pendulum swung again, and the public's unhappy with the way Trump is approaching this, but I think there's an underlying vulnerability there that the Democrats need to address before 2028.

KARL: And -- and, and Sarah, just to be fair, you were at the RNC. When you did the autopsy of the 2012 loss, which didn't exactly set the course for the future of the Republican Party.

SARAH ISGUR: No, it did not, and maybe that will be a lesson for Democrats. I mean, look, everything is heading their way for this midterm election in terms of fundamentals, of the economy, of the unpopularity of the person in the Oval Office.

And yet, Republicans don't have to outrun the bear, they just have to outrun the actual Democrats on the ticket who have proven over and over again that they will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

BRAZILE: Take a look at what happened in Georgia.

KARL: All right. You got --

BRAZILE: And take a look at what's going to happen in Texas. Democrats have a chance.

KARL: We'll see.

 

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