Ronald Brownstein writes:

Anxiety is growing among a broad range of civil-rights, democracy-reform, and liberal groups over whether Democrats are responding with enough urgency to the accelerating Republican efforts to both suppress voting and potentially overturn future Democratic election victories.

With the congressional calendar dominated by President Joe Biden’s multitrillion-dollar spending proposals, these activists are expressing concern that neither the administration nor Democratic congressional leaders are raising sufficient alarms about the threats to voting rights proliferating in red states, or developing a strategy to pass the national election standards that these groups consider the party’s best chance to counter those threats.

These worries haven’t yet reached a breaking point: The wide range of activists I spoke with almost uniformly consider Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi personally committed to combatting the red-state offensive. Most of them also expressed cautious, if wavering, optimism that Democrats can still find a way to pass into law at least some election-standards provisions, which are stalled in the Senate, primarily because of resistance from Democratic Senator Joe Manchin. And a senior White House official I spoke with insists Biden is focused on the threat, even if the administration doesn’t view it in terms as dire as most liberal groups.

Even so, these activists have become more and more uncertain that Democratic leaders have a strategy to overcome Manchin’s hesitance, not to mention his (and other Democrats’) refusal to pare back the filibuster, which Republicans are certain to employ against any voting-rights legislation. What’s more, these activists fear that by focusing relatively little attention on red states’ actions, Democrats aren’t doing enough to create a climate of public opinion in which Manchin and others could feel pressure to act on the issue of voting rights if and when Senate Republicans filibuster against it. [Continue reading…]