He said that they feel like he has moved on. Does he have the courage to stand up for the voters who supported him? Does he have the courage to stand up for democracy when he convenes other nations for a summit?
Other issues, such as the Pandemic, Biden's bipartisan infrastructure law, and a sweeping expansion of the social safety net, have kept elections and voting rights out of the public consciousness.
It means missing the chance to strengthen the reporting and certifying of election results that former President Donald Trump tried to break down to hold onto power after the 2020 election. It means the Democratic Party could miss the chance to push other election priorities.
Adam Bozzi is an executive vice president at End Citizens United and he said that Biden has done some good work. He hasn't shown the same leadership confronting the crisis of our democracy.
The Freedom to Vote Act is the Democrats latest proposal on voting rights.
The year began with Democrats taking control of the Senate after Georgia's runoff elections, and ended with supporters of Trump storming the Capitol in a failed attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential results.
Activists say the day gave them the opportunity for reform and the need for action. The push for new federal voting legislation has rammed it into the reality of a 50-50 Senate. Activists have long said that Democrats must choose between the filibuster and voting rights legislation, and have become more agitated for Biden to speak out more forcefully.
Biden has mentioned that the talks on changing the filibuster for voting rights legislation have been delayed because of his expansive policy agenda. At a CNN town hall in October, Biden said that if he got into a debate on the filibuster, he would lose at least three votes to get what he wanted on the economy and foreign policy.
The Senate's inability to pass election-related legislation has been attributed to the inability of the Senate to ax the filibuster.
In a November interview with POLITICO, Sinema said that everyone knows where she stands on the filibuster.
She was cool with any carve-out for specific topics. The Arizona senator was a co-sponsor of the election legislation. She said that she was open to co-sponsoring lots of other types of legislation to ensure that Arizonans' rights and access to the ballot were protected. Regular order is the best way to do that.
Some hope that a more sustained and public pressure campaign from the president would move them. Nikema Williams said that President Biden has deep relationships in the United State Senate. We need him to lean on those relationships to make sure that we don't allow an archaic procedural rule to get in between Americans and their right to access the ballot.
Senior White House aides have previously defended the president's voting rights, highlighting executive orders he issued directing agencies to find ways to promote voting access. They cite speeches he and Vice President Harris gave calling for federal legislative action. The Department of Justice is trying to block some new state voting laws this year.
The president and Harris are incensed by these anti-voter laws that undermine our constitutional principles and have a core priority to protect and advance the sacred right to vote.
Dozens of White House staff work on the issue of voting rights every single day, and he has highlighted it as a must-pass priority.
Some activists want Biden to confront holdouts who would sustain the filibuster for voting rights. The president and vice president of the country are them. The leader of the Poor People's Campaign said that they had to go to West Virginia and Arizona.
Donald Trump is not the model for much of anything, but the one thing he would do is put pressure on people that were standing against his agenda publicly.
The organization will lead a march in Washington, D.C., on December 13 to call for the passage of voting rights and Biden's expansive social agenda.
In a letter to a colleague in November, Schumer said he intended to re-raise voting rights before the end of the year and that his members were discussing alternative paths for the bill.
He wrote that Democrats should not stop fighting because Republicans will not join them. This is important. We will continue to fight for voting rights even if it means going at it alone.
Schumer listed several other important legislative items that need attention, such as negotiations over Biden's social spending agenda, funding the government, raising the debt ceiling and passing the National Defense Authorization Act.
Schumer asked that he keep his schedule flexible for the rest of the year. It will likely take some long nights and weekends to get each of these important items done this year.
Voting rights should have been one of the first things Congress took up, matching its symbolic numbering of the legislation with where it actually fell on the agenda, according to Williams.
She said that this should have been priority number one in this administration. Climate change and reproductive rights are both policy ideas that you care about in this country.
The chief operating officer of the New Georgia Project Action Fund said that the damage from Congress not doing so was apparent in her home state, because of a law passed earlier this year that added new restrictions to voting and a proposed congressional map that will squeeze Democrats out of a House seat.
She said that the lack of federal legislation is a tax on the people fighting on the front lines. It's forcing us to use resources that we could use to educate voters, and we're having to use those resources on trying to keep these issues in.
She said that not passing legislation could affect voters of color. The idea is to tell people of color that we need more of them to leave, but we will get to it when we can.
The report was contributed by Marianne LeVine.
