WASHINGTON — This week’s setback of a marquee voting rights legislation is, more than ever before in his 5-month-old presidency, putting President Joe Biden’s relationship with progressives under pressure.
The party’s failure this week to clear a procedural hurdle in the Senate that would have started debate on the For the People Act has brought to the surface once-dormant doubts among progressives that the president — when push came to shove — would prioritize their policy issues. They say his relationship with the left, the next election and his legacy as a statesman are on the line if he is unable to find a way to advance voting rights legislation and other core campaign pledges by summer’s end.
“We will have a lot more information about the legacy of this president by the end of July,” said Ezra Levin, co-founder of the liberal grassroots group Indivisible. “Because by the end of July, we’ll know if he has successfully passed reforms to meet the moment we’re seeing now. And history has not been kind to leaders of countries who, in the face of rising fascism, fail to rise to the occasion.”
Even progressives less critical than Levin say frustration is growing with the White House, including on Biden’s opposition to changing Senate rules to allow legislation to pass with a simple majority.
While liberals remain supportive of Biden, they say he is not pushing hard enough and want to see more legislative action on everything from infrastructure investment and immigration policy to police reform and a minimum wage increase.
Instead, they see an agenda stymied by moderate members of his own party, such as Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, and unified GOP opposition led by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
“Between Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema enabling Mitch McConnell, and Biden letting Republicans once again grind a legislative agenda to a halt, that’s where Biden’s real danger lies,” said Markos Moulitsas, a veteran liberal activist. “That liberals will say we worked so hard to get these people elected and truly still, despite everything that happened, nothing much has changed.”
Biden met separately with centrist Democrats Manchin and Sinema, who represent West Virginia and Arizona, respectively, on the eve of the Senate clash over voting rights legislation. Although both senators ended up casting votes in favor of the legislation, Yvette Simpson, CEO of Democracy for America, said Biden — who has been chasing Republican support for infrastructure spending — should have spent more time strategizing with Democrats.
“I think he was so concerned about bipartisanship, he wasn’t thinking about how he was going to get his own caucus to deliver,” Simpson said. “He wanted to try to make this perception that he was this president that could bring everybody together, and now there’s a question about whether he can even get his own caucus together.”
Tension between a Democratic president and their ideological base is nothing new: Former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton both saw that relationship come under strain for long stretches.
A Gallup poll released this week, meanwhile, found that 96% of Democratic voters approve of Biden’s performance, an indication that nearly all of the party’s rank-and-file remain supportive. Other surveys, like a Monmouth University poll released last week, found the president’s support among Democrats had dipped this month, with 86% of party members approving of his performance, compared with 95% in April.
Some activist leaders maintain that the president is still on track to win major policy victories on liberal priorities such as child care, climate change and paid family and medical leave.
“It’s far too early to say that Biden can’t meet the moment,” said Sean McElwee, a prominent liberal activist and co-founder of the polling firm Data for Progress.
Democrats who spoke to McClatchy this week voiced concern that their desire to eliminate a legislative process known as the filibuster in order to pass voting rights legislation without Republicans had not been communicated in a way that would grab the attention of average voters who could encourage Biden and other Democrats like Manchin to support the rule change. The rule currently forces a 60-vote threshold for bills to come up for debate in the Senate.
“Yes, we want the administration to do more. We want the Congress to do more and change the doggone rules so that they are fair,” said Melanie Campbell, president and CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, a civil rights group. “This is how democracies crumble.”
In response to a question about the filibuster on Wednesday, Biden said he would like to see the voting bill pass.
The way frustration is boiling up now among the party’s base is a reflection, liberals say, of how important an issue voting rights has become for many of the party’s grassroots supporters.
The January riot at the Capitol and former President Donald Trump’s ongoing attempts to undermine the results of last year’s election have only increased those concerns, Levin said. More than 70 progressive organizations, including Indivisible, say they plan to mobilize their supporters in July to urge passage of the voting-rights bill, calling the campaign “Deadline for Democracy.”
“Democracy is in crisis right now,” Levin said. “It is a historic crisis. “
With those stakes in mind, progressives lamented what they viewed as a lack of coordination and organization ahead of the vote and an absence of leadership from Biden.
“He’s not leading the ship in the way he needs to lead the ship,” Simpson said.
The White House has defended its record on voting rights, pointing to the president’s own blunt condemnations of the GOP-led push in many red states to restrict voting access and Biden’s long record of support for voting rights as a public official. Earlier this week, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said criticism from some of the party’s lawmakers that the president had not been vocal enough about voting rights was misdirected against the “wrong opponent,” pointing to the unanimous opposition the measure was receiving from Republicans.
Biden has not revealed his next steps. In a statement after the procedural vote failed, the president said he would have more to say next week on voting rights, an issue area he had previously delegated to Vice President Kamala Harris.
The White House insisted on Wednesday that it was plowing ahead with its agenda.
“Look, the truth of the matter is our administration is very busy doing a bunch of things all at one time, but I think our real mantra is that we’re meeting the challenges that we’re presented with, and we’re keeping the promises we made on the campaign trail,” Cedric Richmond, a senior adviser to Biden, said.
Richmond insisted the “fight is not over,” but admitted “we have work to do” on voting rights. He said unanimous Democratic support for the measure was a recognition of White House efforts.
“I don’t think there’s any disappointment in that. And I think that the fact that it was unanimous shows that the president was deeply involved and the vice president, in terms of rallying Democrats and making sure that we were all on board,” he said.
But progressives said that absent a breakthrough on Biden’s agenda, it will be difficult for progressive groups to rally Democrats in next year’s congressional elections.
“It’s quite impossible to ask our activists to have conversations with voters about engaging in the next election if they can’t tell voters what we already are doing. And voters aren’t silly,” Simpson said.
