I waited until after November 3 to write about my primary loss because the general election belonged to the Democratic nominee and to every Democrat on the ballot. They deserved the opportunity to make their case without a former candidate revisiting his own defeat.
Now that the election is over, I owe the people who supported me an honest assessment of what happened, what we got wrong, and what those lessons mean for Democrats looking toward 2028.
In the military, we conduct after-action reviews to understand why an operation succeeded or failed. The purpose is to identify what worked, what didn’t, and what we should do differently next time. That requires examining our assumptions, including the ones that seemed perfectly reasonable at the time.
My campaign made several consequential mistakes. The most significant was preparing to win the general election before we had done what was necessary to win the primary.
The electorate we needed versus the electorate we faced
