New book details White House friction over voting rights push

Politico excerpts portions of Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns’s This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future:

Harris did ask to lead the administration’s push to shore up federal voting rights. But as the effort stalled in Congress, leaving the White House (and Harris) with not many options, she placed some of the blame at Biden’s feet, according to the book. “How was she supposed to communicate clearly about voting-rights legislation, Harris asked West Wing aides, when the president would not even say that he supported changing the Senate rules to open the path for a bill?”

As calls for Biden to come out in favor of a filibuster carve-out for voting rights and frustration with the White House’s perceived lack of prioritization of the issue grew, Harris told Biden aides that she couldn’t be as forceful publicly as she wanted to be. She told him she couldn’t go all out until “voters knew that Biden himself was willing to back the procedural steps required to” pass legislation, the two write.

The VP’s office declined to comment on the excerpts.

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