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The federal voting rights legislation also would have contained funding for election administration processes, including automatic voter registration. Without it, election officials say they will be hamstrung in training staff members and buying needed equipment, running the risk of disruptions. Hundreds of officials from 39 states sent a letter to Mr. Biden on Thursday asking for $5 billion to buy and fortify election infrastructure for the next decade. The letter was organized by a group largely funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebooks founder and chief executive.

Despite that need, at least 12 states have passed laws preventing nongovernmental groups from financing election administration a wide-reaching legislative response to false right-wing suspicions that $350 million donated for that purpose by another organization with ties to Mr. Zuckerberg was used to increase Democratic turnout. (The money mainly covered administrative expenses, including safety gear for poll workers, and was distributed to both Republican and Democratic jurisdictions.)

Some Democrats and civil rights leaders say they fear that the failure of Democrats in Washington to enact a federal voting law could depress turnout among Black voters the same voters the party will spend the coming months working to organize.

Voting rights is seen by Black voters as a proxy battle about Black issues, said Mr. Paultre, in Florida. The Democratic Party is going to be blamed.

In Texas, whose March 1 primary will be the first of the midterms, some results of the sweeping new voting law passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature last year are already clear. In populous counties such as Harris, Bexar, Williamson and Travis, as many as half of absentee ballot applications have been rejected so far because voters did not comply with new requirements, such as providing a drivers license number or a partial Social Security number.

In Harris County the states largest, which includes Houston roughly 16 percent of ballot applications have been rejected because of the new rules, a sevenfold increase over 2018, according to Isabel Longoria, a Democrat who is the countys elections administrator. About one in 10 applications did not satisfy the new identification requirements, she said.

In Travis County, home to Austin, about half of applications received have been rejected because of the new rules, officials said. Were now seeing the real-life actual effect of the law, and, ladies and gentlemen, it is voter suppression, said Dana DeBeauvoir, a Democrat who oversees elections there as county clerk.

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With Voting Rights Bill Dead, Democrats Face Costly Fight to Overcome GOP Curbs - The New York Times

Gov. Phil Murphy is getting a second shot at heading the Democratic Governors Association.

Murphy will serve as vice chairman in 2022, and in 2023 will head the national group that works to elect and re-elect Democratic governors across the country, the DGA announced Saturday. He was previously chairman of the DGA in 2020.

Murphy has already been elected as vice chairman of the National Governors Association, the umbrella organization representing all governors, next year and will be the NGA chairman in 2023.

Only three states Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi have gubernatorial races in 2023. But Murphy has the potential for an oversized role as vice chairman next year because the incoming chairman, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, has a Republican lieutenant governor and GOP-controlled state Legislature, meaning its unlikely hell be spending much time out of his state.

With 36 governors races next year, we believe our Democratic incumbents are in a strong position for re-election, and we have multiple opportunities to flip Republican seats, Murphy said in a statement from the DGA.

I look forward to working with Gov. Cooper to ensure the DGA has the resources necessary to be competitive everywhere, so we can continue to emphasize how Democratic governors deliver on the kitchen table issues that directly impact Americans daily lives.

Former Gov. Chris Christie held the same role when he was in office for the Republican Governors Association. He used the position to crisscross the country in the lead up to his failed presidential campaign.

Murphy criticized how his predecessor spent so much time out of state when he headed the RGA and said he planned to do less travel. He ultimately ended up nearly not leaving the state at all in 2020 after New Jersey had its first recorded case of the coronavirus in March of that year.

Nonetheless, Murphy broke fundraising records for the DGA during that time.

When about travel for the DGA at his coronavirus briefing in Trenton on Monday, Murphy said he wont let the job affect his governorship.

My nose is pressed against the New Jersey glass, he said. As much as I feel strongly weve got something to add to the DGA, well do it in a way that works for New Jersey. Thats something we never violate.

Murphy said he was able to do the job largely on the phone or virtually last time he held the position.

This all comes a little more than a month after Murphy was re-elected governor by a closer-than-expected margin over Republican Jack Ciattarelli amid a surge in Republican turnout. Nonetheless, Murphy became the first Democrat re-elected New Jerseys governor since 1977.

NJ Advance Media staff writer Brent Johnson contributed to this report.

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Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @MatthewArco.

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Murphy getting another shot to lead Democratic governors group - NJ.com

Administration officials such as Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack are now fanning out to rural areas to explain the benefits. Local Democrats are campaigning in districts like this corner of southwest Wisconsin along the Mississippi River that once swung for Barack Obama and has been trending redder and redder ever since.

But as local voters who are overwhelmingly white, blue-collar workers increasingly disagree with Democrats on cultural issues, GOP arguments against government spending are resonating, making it difficult for the White House's messaging to stick.

Money for roads, broadband, thats a big deal, said Gary Weber, a dairy farmer who voted for Biden. But people around here think its a bunch of wasteful welfare. Theyve got to convince people this is for the average person and not big companies.

Gary Weber, a dairy farmer outside Rockland, Wis., voted for Joe Biden in 2020. | Kris Litscher Lee

White House officials, who as recently as this summer argued Biden could go anywhere and engage voters, even in rural communities, privately acknowledge his policies have yet to move the needle with rural voters as Republicans hammer the administration over rising inflation.

Hes got a big job on his hands because people hate him for no reason, Weber said of Biden.

Biden narrowly won Wisconsin in 2020. While he performed slightly better than Hillary Clinton did with rural voters in 2016, Biden lost almost every rural county in the state. Democrats cant afford to fall further behind in rural areas like these, where small margins could determine critical races across the country next year including Wisconsins 3rd Congressional District and the Senate race.

Millions in federal aid from Democrats' pandemic relief law have already reached small communities in southwest Wisconsin. The money has helped local governments keep schools open and respond to Covid-19. Nearly $30 million is helping to keep rural health care facilities running.

And families with two children under the age of 17, for instance, have likely received federal stimulus checks and monthly child tax credit payments this year totaling around $12,000.

The White House criticized efforts to detract from those gains.

The latest climate and social spending bill, which aims to extend the child tax credit, is an economic growth plan that will cut the biggest costs rural families face, said White House deputy press secretary Chris Meagher. By opposing [the plans], the GOP is voting to raise families biggest costs, hike taxes on the middle class, and worsen inflation all to protect tax breaks for the wealthy.

Democrats in Congress, who fought for the funding and argue its helping families address rising costs, acknowledge that many people dont know its something Democrats championed.

No one really connects it, even though they're getting the checks, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said in an interview. As in Wisconsin, Browns state has pockets of small communities that once voted Democratic but have since turned deep red.

Former President Donald Trumps lingering influence is hard to miss across this county of rolling farmland and small villages in southwest Wisconsin. Trump won flags are still everywhere.

The districts longtime Rep. Ron Kind, one of the remaining farm-district centrist Democrats in Congress, barely survived reelection last year. Kind has since announced hes not seeking another term.

Rep. Ron Kind appears at a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. | AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

Republican leaders in the area are railing against Bidens Covid-19 public health mandates while embracing ongoing investigations into false election fraud claims in the 2020 election.

Democrats who will face off in a primary next August to replace Kind have been trying to navigate how they talk to voters about their party's plans, despite Bidens claims that his climate and social spending bill is paid for in part by raising taxes on the wealthy.

There is recognition in this district for the need for broadband, for child care, for job training programs, for transportation. That is all that's very real, said Brad Pfaff, a Democratic state senator who grew up on a farm in the area and is running in the primary for the open seat. And you know, people have shared that, but they also recognize the fact that money is not unlimited.

Local Democratic organizers are not convinced that the investments, while historic, will be able to slow the shifting electorate.

What we do with messaging and policy making and all that, of course, influences people, said Wayde Lawler, chair of the Democratic Party in Vernon County, the districts most competitive rural county. But its by no means the only determining factor.

Many voters in the area, like Sharon Stroh who voted enthusiastically for Obama in 2008, are full-time Trump supporters now. Stroh doesnt doesnt ever plan to vote for a Democrat again no matter how much money they invest in her village of Wilton, population 500, which is slated to receive more than $400,000 in pandemic relief funding.

Millions more are on the way from the infrastructure law to maintain roads, replace lead pipes and provide high-speed, rural broadband internet, all of which Biden and Democrats have touted as game changers for rural communities.

We don't need to print any more money, Stroh said. Obama talked about being shovel ready and all that. That was a bunch of crap.

Stroh acknowledged money for new roads in her area would be nice, and even create some jobs, but shes more concerned about her granddaughter learning what she described as too much about gender identity and race in her school in the Madison area, the states capital and a Democratic stronghold.

She plans to vote for Derrick Van Orden, the Trump-backed Republican who narrowly lost to Kind last year. Van Orden, who has been campaigning across the district's small communities for months, traveled to the Stop the Steal rally in Washington on Jan. 6, before the Capitol attack occurred.

Democrats have called for Van Ordens disqualification following reports that he entered Capitol grounds during the riot. Van Orden denies that. But some voters, like Stroh, say they would support him either way.

As local Democrats try to push back, theyre simply overwhelmed.

Like many Democrats on the ground in rural areas, Mary Von Ruden, chair of the local party in Monroe County, said national Democrats havent dedicated the necessary resources to these areas for years. That makes it even harder to address voters' genuine concerns about the spending while pushing back against misinformation, Von Ruden said.

They dont understand that if they come out here, theyre going to make a difference, said Von Ruden, who at 70 years old, often knocks doors by herself across miles of farmland and small towns. Its a monumental task, she said of the challenges facing Democrats in her area.

Democrats' last hope for holding the district and their remaining footholds in rural America is a small sliver of rural voters whom they still might be able to persuade.

I don't think anybody expects the rural areas to go Democratic, said Brian Rude, a former Republican state legislator whose small village of Coon Valley voted for both Biden and Kind in 2020. But there's enough voters on the edge perhaps some undecideds, some moderate Republicans, independents, some old-fashioned Democrats who can on occasion be brought back.

Meanwhile in Washington, Democratic lawmakers are anxious to pass their social spending and climate bill as quickly as possible so they can hit the road themselves to explain the plans and push back on the GOP ahead of next years midterms.

Republicans face a real challenge in rural Wisconsin explaining to people why they oppose delivering results that make a real difference in peoples lives, said Tammy Baldwin, Wisconsins Democratic senator.

Just to the south from Kinds district, Rep. Cheri Bustos, former chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is also retiring from her swing seat in rural Illinois as Democrats continue to lose rural incumbents. Bustos acknowledged cultural issues remain a challenge for the party and said she hopes the investments will demonstrate Democrats commitment to helping people in rural America and every part of the country.

At the very least, Bustos said, I hope this will help regain some trust.

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Bidens rural investments run up against the culture wars in Wisconsin - POLITICO

Although now-President Joe Biden enjoyed a decisive victory over former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, Democrats had their share of disappointments in down-ballot races last year including centrist Democrat Steve Bullock's loss to Republican incumbent Sen. Steve Daines' inMontana's U.S. Senate race. Bullock, reflecting on the 2020 and 2021 elections, has awarning for fellow Democratsin an op-ed published by the New York Times this week: the Democratic Party has a problem with rural voters, and it isn't getting any better.

Bullock has a track record in Montana politics. Despite being a Democrat in a deep red state, he served as Montana attorney general before serving two terms as governor. But when he tried to unseat Daines in 2020, he lost by 11%.

"The Democrats are in trouble in Rural America," Bullock warns, "and their struggles there could doom the party in 2022. The warning signs were already there in 2020 when Democrats fell short in congressional and state races despite electing Joe Biden president. I know because I was on the ballot for U.S. Senate and lost."

The November 2021 election, Bullock adds, brought Democrats some more disappointments.

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"In this year's governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey," Bullock notes, "we saw the Democratic vote in rural areas plummet, costing the party one seat and nearly losing us the other. It was even worse for Democrats down ballot, as Democrats lost state legislative, county, and municipal seats."

Bullock stresses that Democrats have a major image problem in rural areas of the United States.

"It's never easy for Democrats to get elected in Montana, because Democrats here are running against not only the opponent on the ballot, but also, against conservative media's and at times, our own typecast of the national Democratic brand: coastal, overly educated, elitist, judgmental, socialist, a bundle of identity groups and interests lacking any shared principles," Bullock laments. "The problem isn't the candidates we nominate. It's the perception of the party we belong to."

RELATED:America's embittered rural-urban divide breaks down when it comes to diseases of despair

Bullock doesn't believe that Rural America is a lost cause for Democrats, but he argues that they need to do a better job with their rural outreach.

He explained:

We need to frame our policies, not in terms of grand ideological narratives, but around the material concerns of voters. Despite our differences and no matter where we live, we generally all want the same things: a decent job, a safe place to call home, good schools, clean air and water, and the promise of a better life for our kids and grandkids.

For me, that meant talking about Obamacare not as an entitlement, but as a way to save rural hospitals and keep local communities and small businesses afloat. It meant talking about expanding apprenticeships, not just lowering the costs of college. It meant framing public lands as a great equalizer and as a driver for small business. It meant talking about universal pre-K not as an abstract policy goal, but being essential for our children and for keeping parents in the work force. It meant talking about climate change not just as a crisis, but as an opportunity to create good jobs, preserve our outdoor heritage, and as a promise not to leave communities behind.

"It's time for Democrats to get uncomfortable and go beyond friendly urban and suburban settings to hear directly from folks in small towns who are trying to run a business, pay the bills, and maintain access to health care," Bullock advises. "They have stories to tell and ideas to share, and we should listen."

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Montana Democrat sounds the alarm on his party's "doom" in rural America but has an idea to fix it - Salon

Long ago, in a United States that now seems far, far away, the coming-to-America story of Saule Omarova would be hailed as a stirring endorsement of our nation as a beacon for democracy seekers. Born in 1966 under the Communist dictatorship of the USSR, and raised under her Kazakh grandmother whod lost the rest of her family to Stalinist purges, she grew up with a passion for Pink Floyd and political dissent that caused her to stay here in the U.S. after the Soviet regime collapsed while she was a grad student in Wisconsin.

Not surprisingly, Omarovas work as an American academic hasnt focused on overthrowing capitalism but making it work better for everyday citizens. Inspired by the 2008 economic meltdown, shes most recently proposed a scheme that would allow the Federal Reserve to take on the big banks monopoly on private deposits that caused a credit crunch in the Great Recession. Her research and resum she even worked for a time in the administration of George W. Bush made Omarova seemingly an inspiring pick for President Biden, who tapped her to become the first woman and first nonwhite to oversee banking as comptroller of the currency.

But Omarovas feel-good saga was lost in translation when she hit the Senate for her confirmation process. Instead, the hearing became a public demonstration of everything thats wrong with American politics in 2021 beginning with Republicans who hid their unbridled support for the monopolistic power for Big Banking behind completely twisting Omarovas life story in the worst display of Red-baiting on Capitol Hill since Joe McCarthys liver failed. It started with Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey Wall Streets man in the Senate demanding a paper on Marxism required by her Moscow State University professors in the original Russian language, to kick off efforts to portray Omarova as some kind of Manchurian candidate for the job. It devolved into Louisiana GOP Sen. John Kennedy telling the nominee, I dont know whether to call you professor or comrade a no-sense-of-decency moment even for todays Republicans, at long last.

But what happened next is much more revealing about whats broken with American politics, and arguably matters a lot more as the nation backslides into 2022 midterms that could shake democracy to its core. Because if you think that Senate Democrats rose up to this shameful display of modern McCarthyism by rallying around President Bidens nominee or her ideas that banking should work for the middle class, then you dont know the soul of todays Democratic Party.

Instead, a so-called cadre of centrist Democrats really extremists in defense of their wealthy donors on Wall Street, Silicon Valley and elsewhere sneaked up from behind to put the dagger in Omarovas political fortunes. In a scenario where all 50 Democratic votes were needed, five of these so-called moderates including Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a flashpoint in the downsizing of Bidens progressive ambitions have reportedly told the White House they cant support Omarova, which will kill her nomination. One of the five Democrats, Montana Sen. Jon Tester, had grilled Omarova on a prior comment that seemed critical of Big Oil and Gas.

The torpedoing of Omarova by her own party is hardly an aberration. Instead, it felt like the exclamation point on a recurring theme in Year One of the Biden administration a new presidents determination to turn around the battleship of American politics to help the struggling middle class either slow-walked or increasingly blocked by an entrenched sliver of pro-Wall Street and pro-donor-class Democrats.

Weve watched this process writ large as the centerpiece of the Biden agenda the formerly $3.5 trillion social welfare and climate change package with the unfortunate name of Build Back Better has been stripped of popular items like free community college and seen other key features like paid family leave and lowered prescription drug costs sharply whittled down. The cuts happened not because of Republicans a hopeless bunch whose votes thankfully arent needed to pass this so-called reconciliation bill but because of conservative Democrats like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, the Chamber of Commerce lackey who with his family literally owns a coal company, or New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer whose $450,000 in donations from private-equity firms last cycle is more than any House member, including any pro-business Republican. Even at a much lower $1.5 trillion price tag, its not even clear these divided Democrats can pass Build Back Better.

At the end of the day, it wasnt Republicans but much of this same cadre of ConservaDems including Sinema, whose sharp moves to the right on health-care issues have coincided with $750,000 in campaign contributions from Big Pharma and medical firms that nearly killed the provision aimed at lowering drug costs (which had reemerged in a much downsized form). And its been these same Democrats particularly Northeasterners like New Jerseys Gottheimer whove benefited as Democrats become the party of college-educated white suburbanites whove pared back politically popular new taxes on corporations and the wealthy but are bringing back a tax break for high-income homeowners, allowing Republicans to bash the partys seeming hypocrisy.

The gross irony here is that the pundit class especially the centrists who fantasized about replacing Trump with a somehow popular but essentially do-nothing version of Biden is now blaming the Squad of the furthest left Democrats and excessive wokeness for the sagging poll numbers of the Democrats and their president. But lets get real. On the wokeness front, gridlock in Washington hasnt happened because lawmakers are insisting on using the right pronouns or using the word Latinx.

But much more importantly, its been the left wing in Congress especially the House Progressive Caucus led by Washington state Rep. Pramila Jayapal that has worked most closely with Biden on formulating an actual social welfare policy for the middle class, and which has been willing to compromise again and again and again in order to get something, no matter how diminished and thus deflating, done for its voters. The representatives who dare to brand themselves as moderates have actually been the jihadists whove threatened to blow up the Biden presidency unless their demands to protect Big Banks, Big Pharma and the owners of big McMansions who attend their fund-raisers are met, time after time.

READ MORE: From college to climate, Democrats are sealing their doom by selling out young voters | Will Bunch

Theres two big problems here. The obstructionism of centrist Democrats has mostly squandered what could have been a brief two-year window given the dysfunctional cycle of American politics to take meaningful action on climate change and enact the kind of policies around higher education or paid family leave that are routine in every other developed nation. Thats bad news both for the future of both a civil U.S. society and the health of the planet.

But the schizophrenia of todays Democrats watching Biden and his new progressive allies run full-speed at the football of change, only to watch the Democrat-in-name-only Lucys like Gottheimer and Sinema yank it away again and again has also left the average, not-on-Twitter, not-politics-obsessed voter utterly confused what the party really stands for. I dont blame them. Many days I wonder myself.

The irony is that while the Josh Gottheimers of the world think they are saving themselves by bringing back a big tax break for their rich but socially liberal college-educated districts, they are in reality trashing the Democratic brand, and the ensuing tsunami is going to swamp them as well. In calling their billionaire donors and bragging how that blocked Biden from becoming the new FDR, theyre too money-besotted to see they are creating a Jimmy Carter scenario for Democrats that could end with their party again in the wilderness for decades. In driving away young voters and the nonwhite working class, these political geniuses dont seem to understand that 37 the percentage of voters with a college degree is lower than 50.

Now, in failing to defend Saule Omarova against the brutal McCarthyism of her Republican critics, the Democrats centrist wing is hitting a moral low to coincide with their lack of political foresight as the party melts down and an opposing party that no longer believes in democracy is advancing on the capital, again. In the smoldering ruins of the near future, maybe the right question for these Quislings whod rather save JP Morgan Chase and Merck than the American Experiment is this: Are you now, or have you ever been, a centrist Democrat?

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The dangerous extremism thats killing the Democrats is extreme centrism | Will Bunch - The Philadelphia Inquirer