But if the allies on that November call had expected a rousing speech or valuable insight into the White House’s strategy on voting rights, they left the call disappointed. Harris’s speech included no specifics; she rattled off statistics well-known to everyone on the call about the wave of state-level Republican voting bills; and at one point, she mentioned “inside-outside” organizing as if it were a novel concept in a meeting of organizations that spend thousands of hours and millions of dollars on organizing strategy. Harris, who was leading the White House’s voting-rights push, summed up her efforts so far by saying that she said she’d held “many, many meetings on voting rights.”

Six minutes and 51 seconds later — an irritated participant timed it — Harris thanked the group and logged off. Several participants on the call say they were surprised by how brief and uninspiring Harris’ appearance was. Even if she chose not to share the White House’s own thinking for how to pass new voting-rights legislation, she could’ve used the time to galvanize organizations that had been working non-stop to pass the bills. “It was a chance to fire up the groups that are fighting for this and show a real commitment,” says one participant on the call who asked for anonymity to avoid further fraying relationships with the White House. “The end result was deflating.”

The source added, “It wasn’t necessarily the quantity of the time; it was the quality of the messages to the groups that are killing themselves to pass these bills.”