After every defeat, organizations conduct autopsies. The good ones are honest, like NASA’s Rogers Commission report after the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff. In addition to identifying the infamous O-rings as the proximal culprit, it looked at organizational culture, communication failures, normalization of risk, management pressures, and institutional blind spots. The best ones are uncomfortable, and make a serious effort to understand “why did we mess this up so badly?” I’ve personally seen both good “autopsies” and bad ones throughout my decades of experience in true life-or-death realms: the SEAL Teams and as an Emergency Medicine physician.
Following the 2024 election, the Democratic National Committee produced a lengthy report titled Build to Win. Build to Last. Yet it is not a serious document because it does nothing to prepare for the unstoppable and very near future staring us right in the face. It is nearly 200 pages long and attempts to explain what went wrong and how the party should prepare for the future. It discusses organizing, communications, coalition building, fundraising, digital strategy, and voter outreach. It is filled with references to data, analytics, and technology.
In fact, the report mentions "data" 405 times. It mentions "technology" 25 times, yet never mentions artificial intelligence.
Not once.
There is no discussion of AI. No discussion of machine learning. No discussion of AI native campaigns. No consideration of how rapidly advancing AI capabilities might transform campaigning, political communication, voter engagement, opposition research, fundraising, media production, or governance itself. The omission is striking, not because AI is a trendy buzzword. It is striking because AI may prove to be the most consequential technological shift since the internet itself.
Imagine a corporate board issuing a strategic plan in 1998 that never mentioned the web. Imagine a newspaper in 2007 producing a future-of-the-industry report without discussing social media. Imagine a transportation company in 2010 analyzing its competitive challenges without acknowledging smartphones. We would immediately recognize those omissions as evidence that leadership was looking backward instead of forward, and that is exactly what has happened here.
The conversation around AI in politics has largely been confined to two questions: regulation and misinformation. Can deepfakes deceive voters? Should campaigns disclose AI-generated content? What guardrails are necessary to prevent abuse?
These are important questions. They deserve thoughtful answers.
But they are not the only questions, and if the Democratic Party’s understanding of AI begins and ends with slop videos of politicians committing gaffes they never made, the Republicans once again will win elections through news cycle dominance and operating inside Democrats' OODA Loop. They will make decisions faster, and this will be a competitive advantage at scale.
But a more important question may be whether “small d” democratic institutions are willing to engage with the technology at all.
Because while political leaders debate hypothetical dangers, AI is already reshaping the information environment in which politics operates. It is accelerating research. It is changing how citizens consume information. It is transforming media production. It is lowering barriers to entry for sophisticated communication. It is altering expectations about speed, responsiveness, and personalization.
Modern campaigns, from POTUS to dogcatcher, are information-processing organizations. They collect information, interpret information, communicate information, and respond to information. AI affects every one of those functions. That does not mean campaigns should replace people with algorithms and never knock on another door, but it does mean that campaigns, parties, and civic institutions must understand the tools that are reshaping the environment in which they operate.
Ignoring them is not a strategy.
One of the recurring themes in Democratic post-election analyses is the need to meet voters where they are. That principle is correct. The challenge is that voters themselves are increasingly interacting with information through AI-mediated systems. Search is changing. Content discovery is changing. Information consumption is changing. More importantly, the companies that compete and win in the attention economy are already using AI to place ads in front of viewers that they want to reach. It is happening now, and the electorate is moving into a world shaped by artificial intelligence, whether political institutions are ready or not.
The question is whether those institutions intend to move with it.
Some advocates understandably fear that AI will make politics worse. They worry about disinformation, manipulation, and the degradation of trust. Those concerns are legitimate. Every major communication technology produces new opportunities for abuse. But refusing to engage with transformative technology rarely prevents its adoption. It simply ensures that others determine how it is used. The challenge facing democracy is therefore not whether AI should exist in politics. It already does.
The challenge is whether democratic actors will help shape responsible norms around its use. That means emphasizing transparency over deception. Guardrails over slop. Human accountability over algorithmic opacity. It means establishing standards that strengthen democratic participation rather than weaken it.
Most importantly, it means acknowledging the reality that AI is not the future; it is the present.
The party that describes itself as the defender of democratic institutions should be leading the conversation about how emerging technologies can strengthen those institutions. It should be exploring how AI can help citizens access information, understand policy, engage with campaigns, and participate more effectively in civic life. It should be debating best practices, building expertise, and developing ethical frameworks.
Instead, the technology is absent from the conversation altogether. This is an enormous mistake. A post-election report is supposed to be about the future. If artificial intelligence is missing from that discussion, then the Democratic Party will be the ostrich with its head in the sand.
Daniel Barkhuff is the CEO of Civly.
