Paul Rivera's
Midnight Ride:

A Closer Look
at the DNC's Postmortem

| published June 5, 2026 |

By Bob Armstrong,
Thursday Review contributor

"The autopsy is coming! The autopsy is coming!" shouts out Paul Rivera as he springs to his saddle and gallops through DC's darkened streets past the White House. He's on his way to the Washington Post to drop off a document he believes will represent the high point in his career as a political strategist. After all, this Son of Liberty had been an aide to President Bill Clinton and a senior adviser to John Kerry during his losing presidential run in 2004. Political analysis is what he lives for. It's the horse he rode in on.

At some point along the line he became friends with the Democratic National Committee's chair, Ken Martin, who asked him to prepare an autopsy on the 2024 election. Rivera spent the better part of a year researching and writing up this "After Action Report." It backfired on him big time. Suddenly all his thoughts bent when he read the stories about him saying he's totally spent. Beyond that, on top of all the work he did the DNC paid him nothing and now he can't pay his rent.

The Post, the New York Times, CNN—all the way down the line reporters trashed his autopsy. Listen my children and you shall hear the Wall Street Journal's liberal columnist, William Galston, introduce spectacular failure into the atmosphere. The draft report is "incredibly bad—disorganized, poorly written, nearly devoid of sources and substance." And listen my children to Michelle Goldberg's echo in the Paper of Record: "What's most striking is its utter lack of substance." Another NYT story quotes former DNC chair and 2004 presidential candidate, Howard Dean, who said the report is "a piece of junk."

Galston and Goldberg and their journalistic bedfellows, ready to ride and spread the alarm through every Democratic village and farm, knew they could rev up the Dems to buck up and arm.

Democratic speechwriter and co-host of "Pod Save America," Jon Favreau, announced that DNC chair Martin put an "incompetent friend in charge" of the report who in turn produced an "incoherent product."

Nick Reisman, over at the online magazine, Politico, listening to events unfold with his eager ears, slipped up to New York's capital city for an investigative hear. Among the muster of lawmakers at Albany's door, several come forward to denounce Rivera as a Svengali and a whore. Tossing a touch of guilt by association into the mix, Reisman tars Rivera as possibly in on a fix. He had served as a "key adviser to state Senate Democratic leader John Sampson who...was later convicted of federal fraud charges."

Reisman does note Rivera came to work in the state Senate "with a strong resume," but many staffers and lawmakers in Albany found him "an inscrutable, enigmatic aide who murmured advice in the background." Former Democratic state Senator Diane Savino noted in this story that "You never know who he was really loyal to, on whose behalf he was acting." For the final nail in the coffin Politico "granted anonymity to speak frankly" to another state lawmaker who is "stunned by the idea Rivera would be put in charge of authoring the report. 'Who the fuck gave him that job?' the former lawmaker said."

A good follow up to that remark would have been to ask the former lawmaker, "Who gave an asshole like you your cushy job?"

Maybe I am overreacting, but after scanning the media consensus on Paul Rivera, he comes off sounding like a creepy onanistic 300-pound pervert crashed out on a stained bed sheet watching "Barely 18" porn videos.

No doubt this autopsy is flawed. But it is not poorly written, disorganized, devoid of sources, incoherent, a piece of junk, or lacking in substance. The journalists are correct on the charge the report never mentions anything about the contentious issue within the party on Gaza and Israel, doesn't address President Joe Biden's mental acuity during his disastrous debate performance against Trump, fails to examine the decision to anoint Kamala Harris as the presidential nominee without any competition after Biden withdrew from the race, and ignores that an elite group of influential democrats and donors stuck it to Joe even though he won all the primaries. To say all that in the report would have been nothing more than to say what was and still is glaringly obvious.

Rivera's draft does not lack substance; it is, however, the wrong substance from the critics' point of view. In fact, the report was not written to please the critics, and for that matter it really wasn't written for a wide audience. It is intended for the well-informed few activists who live and breathe politics at places like the No Kings demonstration or the local precinct committee meeting.

Despite the trashing, the report is at its best when it does what every investigative journalist wants: it "follows the money." In this case, Rivera was not looking for graft, bribery or theft, but was the Democratic Party getting good bang for the buck, as in how it was spending one-and-a-half billion dollars on the presidential campaign. Page upon page, well over half the report, is a deep in the weeds accounting of every dollar the campaign spent on advertising and fund raising.

At one point Rivera even calls out the strategy of unrelenting solicitations to fund campaigns. His takeaway is that it does not matter whether the request is "one" phone call "if by land"-line or "two" calls "if by C"-rated cell phone. Either way should be a warning that if you continue to bombard potential voters for donations "it should surprise no one when many voters say 'all the Democrats ever do is ask for money.'"

Sorting through a million here and ten million there is no easy task. It was as if Rivera climbed up a ladder steep and tall to reach a window on the wall. But when he looked out the window all he saw was Ken Martin and a pack of media hounds coming after him with knives out and swords drawn.

What he needs to do now is defend himself, and as of this writing (June 3), Rivera has not responded to media requests for a comment. We desperately need to hear from him a cry of defiance. He must once again jump on his steed, fly fearless through the gloom and light, take on Galston and his media comrades with a fight. Americans from New York City mansions to shacks in California's High Sierras might then awaken and stand by the midnight message of Paul Rivera.




Bob Armstrong is a freelance journalist and the author of a new memoir, No Exit From Vietnam, available on Amazon.

Related Thursday Review articles:

A Pile of Regrets; A Pile of Promises; Bob Armstrong; Thursday Review; May 28, 2026.

A Political Autopsy With Few Surprises; R. Alan Clanton; Thursday Review; February 25, 2026.