There seems to be a narrative being promulgated by the US corporate media that voting rights legislation is dead. If true what lives in its place is a social and legal conflict of epic proportions that will only get worse with each passing day. This is not a problem or a drama that has reached its conclusion by any stretch, but rather a volcano of social and legal events in the early stages of eruption.

When US President Joe Biden says, “I don't know whether we can get this done But one thing for certain, like every other major civil rights bill that came along, if we miss the first time, we can come back and try a second time.” There seems to be an acceptance that the Democratic Party has failed and that it is time to move on. But this is not a problem the United States can move on from.

To say that it is now acceptable to restrict the ability of certain ethnic groups to vote, specifically African Americans is to cast the nation back a hundred years to its darkest days of segregation. This will cause in today’s America a major ever widening social calamity with the potential for vast social unrest.

But restricting the rights of Black voters is just one component in the broad matrix of steps planned by conservative activists, lawmakers and law enforcement sympathizers to end voting and elections as Americans have known them.

From state’s legislatures granting themselves the authority to flatly ignore popular vote counts and determine election winners by legislative fiat to the threatening and intimidating of election workers across the country to the crafting a wide array of laws to selectively thin the ranks of opposition voters. This is a full scale frontal assault on free and fair elections in the United States of America. It’s not going under the radar it’s coming directly to a polling place near you in broad daylight.

The two pieces of legislation under consideration by Democrats in Congress, the For the People Act (HR1) and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act (HR4) will not stop all the anti-democracy plots underway, but they will form a defendable bulwark for attorneys and election workers on the front lines.

At this stage two US Senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona are holding open the door for the assault by thwarting the legislative efforts of 269 of their fellow Democrats. So far both President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have been willing to afford their two antagonists the substantial grace and courtesy traditionally granted to members of the Senate. But it is neither required nor apparently at this stage productive to continue doing so.

Should Biden and Schumer grow weary of their frustration they can apply significant additional pressure and if necessary they can make it personal and painful. So far Uncle Joe has been operating under the mantle of “Healing the soul of the nation.” But there is another chapter in the playbook titled, “Do damage.”

Make no mistake about it, this is going to get rough — big time, for sure. Punches are going to get thrown, oxen are going to get gored and that may be just the beginning, damage will get done, you can be absolutely certain. Biden and Schumer need to get serious about a plan to win a battle that the country cannot afford to lose and it isn’t likely to be pretty.

Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.