The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Biden waited too long to engage on voting rights. It’ll cost him — and voters.

The White House didn’t jump into the fight until this stage of it was nearly over

Perspective by
Keith Boykin is the author of the new book, "Race Against Time: The Politics of a Darkening America."
January 14, 2022 at 4:06 p.m. EST
Protesters gather near the Capitol on Jan. 6 to call for federal voting rights legislation. (Amanda Voisard/Amanda Voisard/for The Washington Post)

This coming week marks the anniversary of President Biden’s first year in office. His administration so far has focused most of its energy on important issues like the coronavirus, Afghanistan, infrastructure, inflation and an expansion of the social safety net. But the biggest threat to his presidency, his party and his country is the one issue that has only recently become a priority for the White House: voting rights.

In a speech in Atlanta on Tuesday, Biden described voting rights as a major part of his “battle for the soul of America.” If that’s the case, then America’s soul may remain in grave peril because his administration and his party didn’t bring all their weapons to the battlefield in time.

Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress, yet they have failed to pass any of the three major voting rights bills that have come up for consideration in the last year: the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, the For the People Act and even the more modest Freedom to Vote Act, a compromise endorsed by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). Now that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) has once again declared her opposition to changing the filibuster rules, all three bills are probably stuck.

The consequences of inaction will be serious — and they’ll come fast.

First, we’ll see more voting restrictions. Last year, at least 19 states passed 34 voter restriction laws, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, including elaborate new ID requirements for mail-in voting in Florida and a Georgia provision that outlaws giving food or water to people waiting in line to vote. This year, at least 152 restrictive bills are expected to carry over into the new legislative sessions in 18 states.

We’ll also see more partisan election reviews disguised as “audits.” Five states that Biden won in 2020 (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) conducted such reviews in 2021, and none of them found any evidence that Donald Trump had actually won the election, as he has claimed incessantly. But failure to find evidence of fraud won’t stop new legislation in some states that could give lawmakers the shocking authority to overturn election results in future years.

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As voter suppression laws become more effective in targeting unwanted voters, Black voter turnout could plummet in this fall’s midterm elections. That turnout could already be in jeopardy because Biden hasn’t delivered on the key issues that matter to the voters who helped put him in office. If the party won’t defend voting rights that help keep Democrats in power in a fair election system, then voters might conclude that they can’t be trusted to defend other interests, either.

Add that to the political risk Biden already faces: His approval rating has slumped, and a significant part of that drop has come from Democrats who are disillusioned by the president’s failure to move his agenda. Facing the prospect of a midterm blowout, Biden risks becoming a premature lame duck if he’s unable to accomplish his major political objectives before November. And Republicans have no incentive to help him achieve any of his goals before the end of the year. That could mean no major legislation will be passed in 2022, even as the nation confronts a pandemic, an economic crisis and a crisis of democracy.

The long-term consequences of the Democrats’ failure to pass voting rights legislation reach far beyond the costs to the party. In a country that has already seen two elections in the past 22 years in which the popular-vote winner lost the presidency, new voter restrictions will only further erode confidence in our democracy.

Perhaps the most permanent danger of congressional inaction is the precedent it sets. If the president and Congress won’t protect democracy just a year after the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, why would Republicans change their pattern of obstruction on other issues? “The biggest thing that happens if we don’t pass voting rights isn’t even about voting,” says Rashad Robinson, the president of Color of Change, a racial-justice organization. “It’s about the next thing they tear down, the next set of freedoms they attack.”

How did we end up in this predicament? The White House made an early and conscious decision to de-prioritize voting rights legislation in hopes of addressing what it perceived to be more urgent needs during Biden’s initial honeymoon period. In its first 100 days, the administration passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, introduced an ambitious legislative agenda, and reversed Trump-era policies on the environment, immigration and transgender rights that were unpopular with the new president’s base.

But by last summer, the delta variant of the coronavirus and the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan took a toll on Biden’s poll ratings, and patience grew thin within his own ranks with each passing month of legislative gridlock. Yet even when it was clear that Republicans would never agree to any proposal to change the filibuster or to compromise on Biden’s agenda, the president overconfidently assured the public that he could use his powers of persuasion and negotiation to broker deals.

As recently as October, Biden remained publicly committed to this strategy. “Here’s the deal,” he said. “If, in fact, I get myself into at this moment the debate on the filibuster, I lose at least three votes right now to get what I have to get done on the economic side of the equation, on the foreign policy side of the equation.”

This was a strategic error, which worsened when the White House persuaded skeptical liberal Democrats to vote for a stand-alone infrastructure bill that passed in November in the expectation that moderate Democrats would then negotiate in good faith on Biden’s Build Back Better Act.

When Manchin finally announced in December that he would not support any version of Biden’s signature bill, the president was left with the worst-case scenario — nothing to show for 11 months of discussions. He had no new economic legislation and no voting rights legislation, and his base felt burned by the process.

Only then did Biden endorse changes to the filibuster and begin to speak out strongly on voting rights. No wonder that Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and other local activists declined to attend Biden’s belated voting rights speech in Atlanta.

As NAACP President Derrick Johnson cautioned after that speech, “Unless President Biden applies the same level of urgency around voting rights as he did for BBB and infrastructure, America may soon be unrecognizable.” Johnson argued that “voting rights should not simply be a priority — it must be THE priority.”

Despite such dire warnings from civil rights leaders, top Democrats have behaved as though nothing has changed since the Supreme Court struck down the preclearance requirements of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in the 2013 case Shelby County v. Holder.

Self-described “institutionalists” like Biden and Manchin have focused on preserving outdated notions of civility and decorum while their Republican colleagues have torched the institutions they’re trying to save. Even after Republicans denied a Senate hearing for President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, and then rushed to approve President Donald Trump’s nominee Amy Coney Barrett days before the 2020 election, some Democratic leaders still clung to the fantasy of bipartisanship.

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Biden himself implored the GOP to “restore the bipartisan tradition of voting rights” during his speech in Atlanta, which Republicans quickly condemned as divisive. But there’s a long history of presidents being divisive in fighting for the interests of the American people against entrenched opposition.

Biden might have been in a better position today if he’d followed the tactics of two famous Democratic predecessors, Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt. Johnson notoriously twisted arms to pass his legislative agenda, and Roosevelt gleefully challenged his enemies in battle. “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today,” said Roosevelt in a pre-election 1936 speech. “They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.”

In contrast, Biden admitted Tuesday that he had been “having these quiet conversations with the members of Congress for the last two months,” then added, belatedly, “I’m tired of being quiet.”

As president, Biden bears a unique duty to protect our democracy. He’s spoken forcefully about it several times in the past few weeks and finally endorsed changing the filibuster. But a few weeks of symbolic speeches after a year of neglect won’t be enough to pass critically needed voting rights legislation or to stop the next assault on our democracy. If this is truly a battle, he needs to arm his soldiers with every possible weapon to fight it.

What you need to know about voting laws

Since the 2020 presidential election, GOP lawmakers have been proposing and passing new laws in an attempt to restrict voting access. A handful of states have been in the spotlight, including Texas, Georgia and Florida.

The latest:

Advocates worry Biden is letting U.S. democracy erode on his watch