Democrats Press the White House for a More Assertive Response to Roe’s Fall - The New York Times

The initial response by President Biden and other Democratic leaders to the overturning of Roe struck many Democrats as painfully inadequate.

“It didn’t seem like there was a game plan,” said Nina Smith, a Democratic strategist.

But those who want to expand the Supreme Court or move to impeach justices who once spoke of Roe as settled law are confronting an institutionalist president who has long been averse to radical changes to the judiciary.

Biden’s response has consisted of urging voters to rally behind Democrats in the midterms, hoping to galvanize a Democratic Party base that polls have shown is in a sour mood.

Biden and other party leaders besides simply asking for money or votes.

And he said that while there was not currently the will to act among Democratic leaders in Congress, he expected that to change.

As Joshua Karp, a Democratic strategist and an adviser to Mr.

The split inside the Democratic coalition is partly generational, as younger activists make the case that the Republican Party and the dynamics in the nation’s capital have fundamentally changed in the decades since Mr.

It is not that restive Democrats do not accept the plain reality that, with a 50-50 Senate and two Democratic senators committed to preserving the filibuster, there is little that can be done legislatively to preserve abortion rights.

“Leadership had a long time to know this was coming and to prepare something more than outrage from a podium and fund-raising appeals,” said David Atkins, a Democratic National Committee member from California, who wanted to hear calls for structural changes to the court or the Senate.

Smith, the Democratic strategist.

Ocasio-Cortez has said that the party must not lapse back into “familiar tactics,” suggesting that Democrats pursue court expansion, expanding of federal access to abortion pills or even abortion clinics on federal lands.

Wade provided into law, though such a bill — which has already passed the House — lacks sufficient support in the Senate.

He said his party had failed to adjust to the tactics of Senate Republicans — who for months held open a Supreme Court seat during former President Barack Obama’s final year and confirmed another justice just before former President Donald J.

Biden, an avowed institutionalist and a proud former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has long resisted the more activist wing of his party

Biden said

Melissa Byrne, a progressive activist who has pushed the White House to eliminate student debt, lamented a lackluster response to the overturning of Roe as part of a broader frustration with Democratic leadership’s unwillingness to be more forceful