By Mike Memoli - NBC News
PHILADELPHIA - US President Joe Biden criticized this Tuesday during a speech in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the wave of changes in state voting laws backed by Republicans that restrict access to the polls for the country's African American and Latino minorities.
The president, who outlined his government's strategy to protect the right to vote in the United States, described the opposition's actions as the
"most heinous
attempts
to damage the integrity of the country's democracy since the Civil War,"
with the intention of to form a broad coalition to "overcome this anti-American trend."
"We are facing the most significant test for our democracy,"
Biden stressed during his speech.
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The president, who has faced mounting pressure from Democratic activists and even close allies to make more aggressive use of the presidential megaphone on voting rights, argued in a long-promised and long-awaited speech that the Republican effort to enact new laws strict voting is "undemocratic, anti-American and unpatriotic."
Biden, speaking alongside Independence Hall in Philadelphia, linked the new voting laws to other historic voter disenfranchisement tactics, including poll taxes, literacy tests, and voter intimidation strategies by the groups like the supremacist group Ku Klux Klan, a White House official explained.
The president also referred to
"the great lie" of the former president, Donald Trump, in reference to his complaint without proof that the elections
of last November
had been "stolen"
from him, and the effect it has had on his voters and on his party. , which has pushed through hundreds of state laws to restrict voting.
"The great lie is simply that, a great lie," the president declared.
The president said that Americans "should be alarmed" by this trend and that it is a "national imperative" that
Congress pass a national reform that counteracts the measures approved at the state level
.
Biden's remarks are consistent with the arrival in Washington on Monday of Democratic legislators from Texas who left the state in a last attempt to block the approval of electoral reforms due to lack of a quorum.
With the vote itself becoming a partisan high point, Biden's speech is closely watched by both parties, perhaps especially by fellow Democrats.
No area can better demonstrate the state of the increasingly uneasy truce between Biden and his party's activist base than the tactical division between them on the issue.
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Progressive leaders, and even some of Biden's traditional allies, have increasingly publicized their frustration over what they see as Biden's inaction in defending federal legislation to counter Republican-led voting law changes.
The White House defends Biden's efforts on behalf of the
For the People
Act
and says it will ask for its passage again on Tuesday.
But officials have been careful how he uses his political capital, seeing better use in mobilizing Democrats to put the right to vote front and center in next year's midterm elections.
"People constantly don't give President Biden credit for being strategic and knowing exactly what to do, how to do it and when to do it," White House senior adviser Cedric Richmond said in an interview.
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Many Democrats say voting rights are urgent in the short term, but they do not believe that opinion will prevail in the White House, where Biden has a long-term vision.
"What we emphasize to the president is that we have our backs against the wall," Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP's Legal Defense and Education Fund, told reporters.
"We must have legislation. We must make the president use his voice, his influence, his power."
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Progressive groups have been more outspokenly critical, demanding that Biden use his pulpit of intimidation not to work toward election victories next fall, but to advocate now for amending the Senate filibuster rules - a parliamentary objection tactic that has led to the need to obtain 60 votes to pass some laws in the Senate - and the enactment of the Law For the People.
"I don't think the number one crisis facing this country right now is our roads and bridges.
I think the main crisis facing the country right now is the rise of fascism and a direct attack on democracy,"
Ezra Levin opined , co-founder of Indivisible, a progressive organization.
Levin said Biden must offer more than a stern warning about the stakes and "passing endorsement" of the
For the People
Act
, calling for "the launch of a White House-led campaign to rally public opinion in favor of it. of this popular idea. "
"
James Clyburn, Representative for South Carolina, the third-ranked Democrat in the House of Representatives, offered this stark warning when he asked Biden to support ending filibustering.
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"We screwed up this voting issue and [Raphael] Warnock is not going to be in the Senate and we are not going to win anything in North Carolina and we will not have a chance in Florida," Clyburn explained in an interview, referring to three camps. Senate battlefield in the midterm elections, where he suggested there are fears that black turnout could be affected due to changes in the Republican vote.
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For Biden and his senior team, the kind of public press activists from across the court that they wanted him to do before a key Senate vote on voting rights last month wasn't going to move enough Republican senators to ensure the final approval, and it could have cost him valuable political capital when he needed it to promote a fragile bipartisan infrastructure package.
Instead, Biden focused on a more achievable task: working to ensure unanimity within the Democratic caucus, something that is not a given, as the Senator put it.
Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, remained undecided until the last hours.
Richmond said: "We didn't have 50 votes before that vote. The president worked on the phone, and we got the support of all the Democratic senators. If they want a president who just beats his chest without saying anything, they had it in the last president. The current one keeps his head down, does the work and tries to get the result we need, "he said.
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Administration officials maintain that while activists from both parties have focused on the debate, most Americans have not.
That's the least ideologically and politically focused audience that Biden will speak to directly on Tuesday and in the months ahead.
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The goal is to increase pressure not only on the House and Senate elections next year, but also on the kinds of state and local legislative races that ultimately have the greatest impact on voting laws.
That's why, when Biden met with civil rights leaders at the White House on voting issues last week, Vice President Kamala Harris was firing the starting pistol at what Democrats say will be a major electoral boost in the vote.
"Remember, this is not just about a national election," Harris said.
"This is also about state and local elections. It is about who will be your sheriff, your mayor or your school board member - the people who are elected and then make decisions that affect their daily lives."
He announced an initial $ 25 million investment from the Democratic National Committee, which the party says is the largest and earliest in history, to register, educate and attract voters while fighting voter suppression efforts at all levels. .
The chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Jaime Harrison, said in an interview: "I think the president wanted to see what was going to happen in terms of the movement of Congress on this. But what they are about to see is a dramatic increase in terms of pushing from this administration and the Democratic Party to make sure people understand that this is our most sacred right and something worth investing in and fighting for. "
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A White House official said Biden on Tuesday would convene "a new coalition, made up of advocates, activists, students, religious leaders, labor leaders and business executives, to overcome this anti-American trend and face the moment in terms of participation and vote".
education."
But some key Democrats worry that a 16-month mid-term election strategy could be ineffective if voter suppression tactics continue to prevail in Republican-led states and counties before then.
Clyburn, whose efforts helped the Administration take office, is pressuring Biden to support the changes to filibustering.
"If we do what is necessary to allow people to vote without restrictions, we will not have to worry,
because we will win big in the midterm elections,
" he said.
"But if we don't, we will lose a lot in those elections. First things first," he said.
So far, Biden has only voiced his support for making it harder for them to be filibustering, for example, by requiring senators to stay in the room and speak.
Officials did not disclose whether defending that exchange rate would be a factor in Biden's public case.
Richmond said Biden speaks regularly with Manchin, among other lawmakers whose support for any major voting change would be critical.
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Even as the White House lays the groundwork for a political fight on voting issues next fall, officials say they are working closely with legislative leaders to find a way forward on another key voting rights measure that still remains. Not fully written: A renewal of the Voting Rights Act is named after the late civil rights icon John Lewis.
"Our goal is to sign something in this Congress sooner rather than later," Richmond said.