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Democratic leaders hoped to spend the week before Martin Luther King Jr. Day presenting a united front for voting rights legislation and blasting Republicans as undemocratic. 

So much for that.

Multiple high-profile voting rights leaders are planning to skip President Joe Biden's speech on the matter in Atlanta today, dismissing the address as too little too late. “We’re beyond speeches. We’re beyond events,” said LaTosha Brown, the leader of Black Voters Matter. (h/t Sam Gringlas from NPR’s Atlanta Bureau)

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President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats are entering the second week of their push to pass a pair of voting rights bills.

Ryan Lizza is a co-author of POLITICO Playbook

Jenny Ament is senior producer of POLITICO Audio.

The White House is looking to Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) to help thaw out its frosty relationship with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) in hopes of resurrecting President Joe Biden's Build Back Better plan.

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For those who always despised him, feel betrayed by him, or fear his return to power, today is about remembering — never forgetting — Donald Trump's lowest point as president: the day he incited a mob to attack Congress while it affirmed Joe Biden's clear victory, the final desperate move in a plot to overthrow an American presidential election.

For those who love him, merely tolerate him, or crave his return to the White House, today is a media stunt: a contrived anniversary of an insignificant event boosted by Democrats and the press to punish Republicans and cynically advance Biden’s legislative priorities. 

Americans often have a shared understanding about big traumatic national events. That is not the case with Jan. 6, which is why the cliché about our politics feeling like a civil war has more and more resonance. 

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Republicans don’t want to talk about Jan. 6. Period. End of story.

On a private call Tuesday, House GOP leaders encouraged their members to stick to attacking President Joe Biden — or, at most, talk about ongoing security concerns at the Capitol. Republican senators, meanwhile, dodged questions about the Thursday anniversary. 

Indeed, it’s becoming increasingly clear that — with the exception of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and perhaps a few others — the day of remembrance will be a nearly all-Democratic affair.

And, the GOP did get some good Jan. 6 news: Trump’s decision to cancel his Mar-a-Lago press conference, where he was expected to defend the rioters and spew election falsehoods. Congressional Republicans were privately dreading it, knowing reporters would once again demand their responses to whatever the former president said.

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Today's Big Event: Senate Democrats will hold a virtual meeting at 12:45 p.m. It will be the first opportunity of the new year for all 50 caucus members to talk about where Build Back Better 2.0 stands and what they think of Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER’s new voting rights push. On both issues — as usual — every utterance of JOE MANCHIN (W.Va.) and KYRSTEN SINEMA (Ariz.) will be examined like a haruspex inspecting a sheep liver

The Latest Deadline: As we previewed Monday, voting rights and election reform will dominate the debate in Washington over the next weeks.

Meeting self-imposed deadlines has not exactly been the Democrats’ forte over the last year, but Schumer said Monday he wants the Senate to consider rules changes by Jan. 17 if voting rights legislation is filibustered.

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It’s going to be an emotional week for a lot of people on Capitol Hill. With the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol siege Thursday, Congress is planning an array of memorials and speeches to commemorate one of the darkest days in American history. Lawmakers will have the opportunity to tell their personal stories of what it was like to hide from angry rioters. Cable news will blanket the airwaves with harrowing footage of the assault. Leaders of the Capitol Police will testify before the Senate Rules Committee about the security situation one year later. 

But Democrats are hoping that Thursday will be more than just a day of remembrance. In the Senate, we hear from well-positioned sources, there’s a desire to take the opportunity to supercharge the party’s long-stalled voting rights legislation — possibly even using the anniversary to try to get Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to go nuclear on the filibuster or embrace rules changes.

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"This is a real ----ing problem." That’s how one vulnerable House Democrat summarized growing discord between members in battleground districts and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. That member and five others Playbook spoke with the past week alleged that the Democratic organization whose purpose is to help the party keep the House next year is instead hurting their chances of reelection.

We granted the members and their staff anonymity to speak freely about their frustrations.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
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It’s a fitting end to a year dominated by two Senate Democrats at the center of pretty much everything in 2021: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have all but put the kibosh on two major proposals their own party was hoping to pass before the holiday break.

First: Manchin’s talks with President Joe Biden over Build Back Better hit a brick wall. Earlier this week, Senate Democrats were looking to the president to bring the stubborn West Virginia Democrat around. Instead, Burgess Everett, Alex Thompson and Jonathan Lemire report that their discussions have gone so poorly that they’re “straining their friendly relationship.”

Second: Realizing the BBB challenges with Manchin, Senate Democrats this week did an about-face on their topic du jour. Instead of narrowing in on their $1.7 trillion social spending bill, they started eyeing a Senate rule change to enable passage of a long-stalled voting rights bill.

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The Senate passed a debt limit increase of $2.5 trillion Tuesday afternoon, and the House followed suit just after midnight. Congress should be freed from addressing the issue again until 2023.

A final vote on the long-stalled NDAA is likely in the Senate today. Congress has funded the government through mid-February. It shouldn’t exactly get a big pat on the back for doing the basics, but the three issues were all cleared with some degree of bipartisanship and less brinkmanship and drama than expected.

The next big hurdle for Democrats? Senator Joe Manchin.

And, Doug Sosnik was an adviser to Bill Clinton for six years, and for some dozen years he has written regular memos about national trends that have attained something of a cult following among political junkies. We know many of our readers are fans of his wonky missives, so we’re pleased to present Sosnik’s latest memo, “A Look Ahead to the 2022 Midterm Elections and Beyond,” exclusively to the Playbook audience.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Senior Producer of POLITICO Audio.