This is — I'll opt for understatement — regrettable?
A union of congressional Democrats and activist groups has undertaken a Republican 2012like autopsy on the party's abysmal 2020 showing. Reports the Times: "There is particular concern … about the party’s losses in House districts with large minority populations, including in Florida, Texas and California" and its greater-than-expected "vulnerabilities in rural areas and right-of-center suburbs."
Then the kicker: "The review is probing tactical and strategic choices across the map, including Democratic messaging on the economy and the coronavirus pandemic, as well as organizational decisions like eschewing in-person canvassing.
Notice any items missing among the party's "particular concern"?
Only about 2/3s into the article do we fleetingly espy a panicked matador waving a big red cape, with the party's devastating, mangled 2020 messaging scrawled all over the bloody thing: "A group of centrist House members [had] blamed left-wing rhetoric about democratic socialism and defunding the police for their losses in a number of conservative-leaning suburbs and rural districts." (Then, but only incidentally: "That airing of differences did not last long: Democrats quickly closed ranks.")
What the party is brushing aside is that large minority populations in Florida, Texas, California and elsewhere are not especially keen on reductions in police protection and overt messages of Socialism Now! While leftist on some issues, these populations are moderate to conservative on most others, just like white Americans. Skin color does not predetermine political ideology. As for rural and right-of-center suburbs, one needn't be a Democratic strategist to know that leftist messaging won't work. In fact, only a Democratic strategist would pretend it might.
Not one of these strategists even hinted to the Times that way-off-bubble utterances about socialism and liquidating law enforcement budgets entailed the effecting motherlode of Democratic losses. That job was left to an RNC member who explained, as though he were talking to a five-year-old, that the party's more radical delivery had turned off loads of gettable voters, including many Blacks, Hispanics and Asian-Americans. Democrats were "running off a lot of middle-class Americans who work hard for a living out in the heartland, or in big cities or suburbs," he said cleanly, competently, and accurately.
In its reporting on Democratic navel-gazing, the Times adds an editorial, historical touch: "Democratic attempts at self-scrutiny have tended to yield somewhat mushy conclusions aimed at avoiding controversy across the party’s multifarious coalition." By avoiding controversy — again — via conciliating radical voices, mushy Democratic self-scrutiny will — again — result in Shakespearean tragedy: The autopsy will be a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.