Advocates for voting rights fear Biden is letting democracy erode
President urged to take more action
WASHINGTON — Voting rights advocates meet once every week or two with White House officials by videoconference, and in almost every session, an advocate speaks up to say that President Joe Biden must do more, that American democracy is under threat and the president is not meeting the challenge.
At one such meeting earlier this year, a Biden aide responded that Democrats would simply have to “outorganize” the other side, according to multiple advocates familiar with the exchange. The comment infuriated advocates, who believe they are watching former President Donald Trump actively and perhaps permanently undermine faith in U.S. elections.
“There’s been a lot of anger and frustration with that line from the White House, which was communicated as a response to advocates wanting the White House to do more,” said Aaron Scherb, legislative director of pro-democracy group Common Cause.
Scherb conceded that the White House’s urgency has significantly amped up in recent days, as voting rights legislation comes up for debate on Capitol Hill.
But the ongoing frustration is widespread among activists and many Democrats who fear Biden is missing the urgency of the moment.
In the nine months since Biden took office, GOP officials throughout the country have baselessly challenged the 2020 results, conducting elaborate and clumsy audits. States have restricted voting, often in ways activists say will hurt disadvantaged communities, and have changed their procedures to allow political influence over future elections.
Trump, meanwhile, frequently proclaims — with much fury but no evidence — that the last election was stolen, and some Republicans routinely assert that future elections will be rigged as well. Many in Trump’s camp have taken to lauding the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which was aimed at violently overturning the last election, as a heroic act.
Activists want Biden to provide a loud, clear voice against these moves, from prime-time speeches to regular denunciations of especially egregious actions. Beyond that, they say, he should throw himself into passing voting rights legislation and more aggressively go after states that are politicizing their election systems.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said the account of the meeting with voting rights advocates was false. “No White House official has ever said that our strategy relied on ‘out-organizing’ anti-voter laws,” Bates said. “The president and vice president’s approach is comprehensive, and it includes passing voting rights legislation and using executive authority, the bully pulpit, the convening power of the White House, organizing, and a host of other tools.”
Still, in the months since taking office, Biden has largely focused his time and energy elsewhere.
Shoring up democracy was not among the four crises — coronavirus, the economy, climate change and racial equity — that he promised to tackle upon taking office. He has not devoted a full prime-time address to the topic, as he did in March to commemorate the first anniversary of pandemic shutdowns.
His top priorities in Congress now are an infrastructure bill and a social safety net package. The Senate next week is again expected to take up voting rights legislation, which the administration and outside groups view as critical, but it has little chance of passage without changes to the Senate filibuster rules.
“I think the pulpit could be bullier,” said Damon Hewitt, the executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, said the administration’s lack of urgency about safeguarding democracy, especially by shoring up voting rights, is “appalling.”
“I have heard from many of my colleagues and members that the lack of priority around voting rights will be the undoing of the legacy for this presidency,” Johnson said.
Hewitt, who met with Biden at the White House alongside other civil rights leaders in July, said it is a mistake for activists to put the onus entirely on the Biden administration to protect democratic institutions. But he said he would like to see the president be more forceful in attacking voting restrictions.
For many Biden allies, what they see as his tepid response is especially jarring when compared with his urgent rhetoric during the campaign, which framed his entire candidacy as an effort to restore and protect democracy.
He announced his candidacy in a short video that was light on biography and policy — and instead revolved around the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, warning that “our very democracy” was at stake and casting his campaign as an urgent mission to combat the threat posed by Trump.
After winning the Democratic nomination, Biden similarly framed his candidacy as crucial to the effort to “save our democracy.”