A bite to choke on

The immigration bill failed in a senate vote today, 53-46. The result is not a huge surprise, although Framer, despite predicting it's ultimate failure for weeks, found the final margin to be wider than he anticipated. Kudos for him for being on top of this from the get go. In particular, he noted early on the level of Democratic unhappiness with the bill (which did not get wide media coverage), and in the end 15 Democrats voted against it.

While the bill tried to provide something for everyone to like, it ended up providing something for everyone to hate instead. The border-wall bunch hated the entire route to citizenship proposal, and were concerned the enforcement provisions in the bill would never actually be ... well ... enforced. Given our history of (not) enforcing existing provisions, you can't really say their fears were unfounded.

Liberals, meanwhile, ended up seeing the provisions for guest-workers as a means to create an underclass within the labor force. Also, I suspect (as I noted before, and Framer did as well) there was a lack of enthusiasm for Democratic lawmakers to vote for a bill the President was so openly hoping to see come up for his signature. For anyone "on the fence", throwing the President such a lifeline when his popularity is at near-historic lows would have been a strong disincentive for voting in favor of the bill.

The vote outcome itself just reinforces how weak the President's position has become -- does anyone really think if this bill had come up for a vote three years ago, it would not have passed? I would say this really hurts the Bush administration, except it's hurting so much already how much more does yest another setback, even one of this magnitude, really mean?

So the status quo remains, which everyone seems to agree is not working, but which most everyone seems to prefer to the recently scuttled alternative. Apparently everyone felt things really could get worse after all. So what's next?

X4mr suggests trying to break the bill up into smaller chucks, focusing on pieces that might be passed. I am not sure I see this as being any better though. Both sides of the debate aren't going to give something to the other side without getting something back in return, of course ... so pieces have to be tied together. "I'll trade you more border security agents for a route to citizenship" for example. The problem is, certain pieces become very intertwined -- border agents, increased capacity to hold aliens, etc., and it may not make sense to pass some parts without others ... but then if a bigger chunk for one side gets proposed, the other side demands more in return, and the whole thing becomes too big to swallow again.

So the whole thing gets tabled, for this year at least, and it's hard to see either side agreeing to anything next year, when what looks to be a very heated Presidential race moves front-and-center. I expect it will be 2009 before we see the matter seriously addressed again.

Meanwhile, maybe we can all focus on something less divisive, such as impeaching Darth Cheney.