华盛顿——大型基础设施投资的希望摇摇欲坠。一项雄心勃勃的选举和投票法案几乎夭折。关于警察暴行、枪支管制和移居停滞不前。
在民主党控制华盛顿六个月后，随着竞选承诺的兑现，该党的进步派越来越焦躁不安——不仅受到共和党的阻挠，也受到民主党自身无法围绕优先事项充分团结的阻碍。
对于乔·拜登总统和他在国会的盟友来说，未来的时间至关重要，他们要抓住一些人眼中的变革时刻，重建经济，重塑国家。
“有很多焦虑，”民主党众议员罗康娜说。他曾是伯尼·桑德斯总统竞选的联合主席。“对拜登总统来说，这确实是一个问题:他想成为什么样的总统?”
夏季工作期传统上是国会最繁忙的时期之一，但今年随着民主党人努力实现拜登的议程，这一时期尤其突出。参议院多数党领袖查克·舒默(Chuck Schumer)警告同事们，6月份将“考验我们的决心”，因为参议员们周一返回时，基础设施谈判拖拖拉拉，参议院50-50两党合作的限制越来越明显。
上周末，当弗吉尼亚州民主党参议员乔·曼钦(Joe Manchin)宣布反对这项名为S1的投票法案时，该党受到了重创，因为这是该党的首要任务。许多民主党人认为，这对于保护民主和直接应对前总统唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)怂恿的共和党领导的州正在通过的限制性新投票法至关重要。
“我感到气馁了吗?是的，”华盛顿民主党众议员普拉米拉·贾亚帕尔说。国会进步核心小组主席，警告说，没有兑现承诺。“我们将失去一代选民。”
舒默在制定议程时，要求参议员们准备做出艰难的选择。但他也面临着对自己领导大帐篷党度过特朗普时代和国会起义后优先事项和策略转变的动荡时期的能力的考验。
尽管民主党参议员一直在通过在平分秋色的参议院审议两党法案来产生善意，但他们面临着来自选民的越来越大的压力，这些选民让他们上台为共和党人决心通过阻挠议案来阻止的立法而努力奋斗。民主党在参议院占据优势，因为副总统卡玛拉•哈里斯可以打破投票平局。
受够了拖延，一些参议员准备改变规则，以消除阻挠议事，他们指责这是不作为的原因。长期存在的参议院阻挠议事规则要求60票才能推进大多数立法，这意味着多达10名共和党人需要跨越党派界限来帮助民主党人实现他们的优先事项。一些参议员提议将投票门槛降至51。
但曼钦周日宣布反对投票权法案，称其为“将我们的国家团结在一起的错误立法”，同时重申他拒绝结束阻挠议事——目前，拒绝给他的政党进行必要的关键投票，以改变规则，帮助推进其议程。
周二，包括阿尔·夏普顿牧师和马克·莫里尔在内的主要民权人物计划在华盛顿会见曼钦。拜登敦促他们拜访参议员，讨论投票法案和立法议程。他鼓励他们保持对话的建设性，不要给参议员施加压力——据一位熟悉讨论但无权谈论私人对话的人说，至少现在还没有。
尽管曼钦已经谈到支持另一项投票法案——约翰·刘易斯投票权法案，但S1的支持者表示，这两项立法都是必要的。白宫新闻秘书珍·普萨基周一表示，拜登同意国会应该推进这两项工作。
与此同时，支持S1的民主党团体誓言要继续进行3000万美元的竞选活动，向民主党参议员施压，要求他们重写阻挠议事规则并通过法案——包括在曼钦的西弗吉尼亚州播放电视广告。
但是不仅仅是曼钦反对修改阻挠议事的法律。如果没有他或其他阻挠议事者的支持，比如亚利桑那州参议员基尔斯顿·西内马(Kyrsten Sinema)，民主党参议员将被迫面对他们脆弱的多数派的限制。如果民主党人决定在大型基础设施法案上单干，随着与共和党参议员的谈判陷入僵局，他们需要团结起来，因为他们没有多余的选票。
未能兑现受选民欢迎的竞选承诺可能会加剧政党分裂，并使民主党面临来自自己阵营和共和党的批评，共和党急于表明拜登的政党无法执政。
“我们需要行动起来，”自由主义倡导组织“美国民主”的首席执行官伊薇特·辛普森说。
关于2020年的选举，她说:“我们告诉每个人要不顾一切地出来投票。”。承诺是，随着民主党掌权，“我们将有所有这些伟大的事情发生，他们的生活将会更好。他们发现这里看起来像华盛顿一样。”
自今年1月成为多数党领袖以来，舒默一直在为这一时刻奠定基础，试图证明两党合作在某些情况下可以奏效——通过一项亚洲仇恨犯罪法案或一项水公共工程一揽子计划。但据两名不愿透露姓名的民主党助手透露，他也认识到这有其局限性，以讨论私人策略。
一名助手说，民主党每周的闭门政策核心小组午餐一直很紧张，特别是在他们举行的两次特别会议期间，这两次会议是为了私下辩论投票权法案的前进道路。
助手们说，舒默没有迫使不情愿的参议员们就范，而是试图让民主党人得出自己的结论——要么与共和党人达成两党协议是可能的，要么他们别无选择，只能在基础设施或其他优先事项上单干。
一名助手暗示，舒默不是林登·约翰逊式的高压领导者，他在成为总统之前以强硬的游说作为多数党领袖而闻名。
然而，卡纳说，总统可以发挥重要作用。“这将是他的LBJ时刻——他能拿起电话施展魔法让他的民主党人加入进来吗?”
'A lot of anxiety' for Democrats as Biden agenda stalls
WASHINGTON -- Hopes for a big infrastructure investment are teetering. An ambitious elections and voting bill is all but dead. Legislation on police brutality, gun control andimmigrationhas stalled out.
After six months of Democratic control in Washington, the party's progressive wing is growing increasingly restless as campaign promises go undone — blocked not only by Republican obstruction, but also by Democrats' own inability to unite fully around priorities.
The time ahead is pivotal for President Joe Biden and his allies in Congress to seize what some view as a transformative moment to rebuild the economy and reshape the country.
“There's a lot of anxiety,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Ca., who had been a co-chair of Bernie Sanders' presidential bid. “It’s a question really for President Biden: What kind of president does he want to be?”
The summer work period is traditionally among the busiest for Congress, but especially sharpened this year as Democrats strain to deliver on Biden's agenda. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer warned colleagues that June will “test our resolve” as senators returned Monday with infrastructure talks dragging and the limits of bipartisanship in the 50-50 Senate increasingly clear.
The party suffered a debilitating blow over the weekend when Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., announced his opposition to the voting bill, titled S.1 because it is a top party priority. Many Democrats view it as crucial to protecting democracy and a direct response to restrictive new voting laws being passed in Republican-led states egged on by Donald Trump, the former president.
“Do I feel discouraged? Yes,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, warning of a failure of deliver on the promises. “We will lose voters for a generation.”
Schumer, in setting the agenda, is challenging senators to prepare to make tough choices. But he is also facing a test of his own ability to lead the big-tent party through a volatile period of shifting priorities and tactics in the aftermath of the Trump era and the Capitol insurrection.
While Democratic senators have been generating goodwill by considering bipartisan bills in the evenly split Senate, they face mounting pressure from voters who put them in office to fight harder for legislation that Republicans are determined to block with the filibuster. Democrats hold the edge in the Senate because Vice President Kamala Harris can break a voting tie.
Fed up by the delays, some senators are ready to change the rules to eliminate the filibuster, which they blame for the inaction. The long-running Senate filibuster rules require 60 votes to advance most legislation, meaning as many as 10 Republicans would need to cross party lines to help Democrats achieve their priorities. Some senators propose reducing the voting threshold to 51.
But Manchin, in announcing his opposition to the voting rights bill Sunday as the “wrong piece of legislation to bring our country together,” also restated his refusal to end the filibuster — for now, denying his party a crucial vote needed to make the rules change that could help advance its agenda.
On Tuesday, leading civil rights figures including Rev. Al Sharpton and Marc Morial are scheduled to meet with Manchin in Washington. Biden urged them to visit the senator to discuss the voting bill and the legislative agenda. He encouraged them to keep the conversation constructive and not put pressure the senator — at least not yet, according to a person familiar with the discussion but not authorized to speak about private conversations.
While Manchin has talked about supporting another voting bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, advocates of S.1 say both pieces of legislation are needed. Biden agrees Congress should move forward with both, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday.
At the same time, Democratic groups supporting S.1 vowed to continue with a $30 million campaign pressing Democratic senators to rewrite filibuster rules and pass the bill — including with TV ads in Manchin’s West Virginia.
But it's not just Manchin who opposes changing the filibuster laws. Without support from him or other filibuster defenders, like Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., Democratic senators will be forced to confront the limits of their fragile majority. If Democrats decided to go it alone on the big infrastructure bill, as talks with Republican senators stall, they would need to be unified because they would have no votes to spare.
Failing to deliver on campaign promises that are popular with voters could exacerbate party divisions and expose Democrats to criticism from their own ranks as well as from Republicans eager to show that Biden's party cannot govern.
"We need to move the ball,” said Yvette Simpson, CEO of Democracy for America, a liberal advocacy organization.
“We told everyone to come out against all odds in the pandemic and vote,” she said about the 2020 election. The promise was that with Democrats in power, ”we’re going to have all these great things happen, their lives are going to be better. And what they’re finding is that it looks like Washington as usual.”
Schumer has been laying the groundwork for this moment since he became majority leader in January, trying to build the case that bipartisanship can work in some cases — with passage of an Asian hate crimes bill or a water public works package. But he also recognizes that it has limits, according to two Democratic aides granted anonymity to discuss the private strategy.
The Democrats' weekly closed-door policy caucus lunches have been intense, particularly during the two special sessions they have held to privately debate the path forward on the voting rights bill, one of the aides said.
Rather than force reluctant senators to fall in line, Schumer is trying to lead Democrats to their own conclusion — either bipartisan deals with Republicans are possible or they have no choice but to go it alone on infrastructure or other priorities, the aides said.
One aide suggested Schumer is no arm-twisting leader in the style of Lyndon Johnson, who before he became president was famous for his hardball cajoling as majority leader.
Khanna said the president, however, can have a big role. “This would be his LBJ moment — can he pick up the phone and work his magic to get his Democrats on board?”
