Facing a Republican Party with a growing anti-democratic contingent, Democrats are debating what to do — to bolster their party and, in the view of some in the party, American democracy itself. At the heart of the discussion is how much structural reform do the nation’s governmental and electoral systems need.

This debate is largely happening in public, in op-eds and on Twitter. But it’s mostly in the background, lurking behind basically everything that is happening in the Democratic Party — like which issues to prioritize, whether to try to work with Republicans in Congress and, most of all, whether to ditch or reform the Senate filibuster. It’s often implicit, rather than explicit, as the people doing the debating are trying to persuade — but not annoy — a small group of people in the party who will ultimately decide the Democrats’ posture on these issues: President Biden and a handful of senators.