“There better be a Plan B. I just don’t know what it is,” Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii told me last week in the Capitol. When I asked the Senate’s second-most-powerful Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, what the party’s next step would be, he was similarly stumped. “That’s a good question,” Durbin replied. “I don’t know,” conceded both Representative Jerry Nadler of New York, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and, separately, Chris Coons of Delaware, President Joe Biden’s closest Senate ally. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, after first suggesting that Democrats might narrow the bill if it couldn’t pass in its current form, soon acknowledged the obvious. “There’s a top-secret plan in place that I can’t share with you that will eventually get [the bill] passed in totality,” he said with a chuckle. These headshakes exemplify the party’s quandary as it confronts both the limits and the precariousness of its slim majorities in Washington: Democrats claim that democracy is under threat, but they lack the collective will to save it. Self-interest is also at play. Aggressive attempts by Republicans at the state level to restrict voting in advance of the 2022 midterm elections have led many Democrats to believe that their only chance to retain power is to pass voting-rights legislation in the next few months. Their resulting desperation, in turn, has invited GOP attacks that the election bill’s aim is partisan in nature.