A Bipartisan Effort

Peter Brown from the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute has a very clear analysis of why the immigration "reform" bill failed in the Senate. It should be a wake-up call for the Democrats, because it signals real trouble if the leadership continues to tilt to the left. Because it was a bipartisan effort that scuttled the bill.

Just as in recent years when Bush often could not win over GOP lawmakers who weren't sufficiently conservative, the Democrats have a problem with their members who aren't die-hard liberals.

Any notion that the Democrats' bare 51-49 Senate edge and similar percentage margin in the House translates into real control is illusionary. And, ironically, the reason is a result of the way they fashioned their new majority.

To be sure Democrats and Republicans have differing views and values, but the inability of Congress to come up with an acceptable immigration solution stems from as many intra-party divides as partisan ones.

There were both Democratic and Republican senators who thought the measure did not tilt enough toward immigrants' rights, and those who thought it unacceptably slanted in that direction. At the margins, the majority of Republicans wanted to err on the side of toughness and the Democrats wanted to make it less onerous for illegal immigrants.

Democrats took Congress last November by winning the deciding seats in conservative states where the party had suffered recently.

Many, perhaps naively, assumed that the results meant that the country was moving further left from its more conservative perch that began with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

But, the 2006 sweep wasn't necessarily the result of a public decision that the Republican worldview was wrong. Rather it was the public's judgment about competence, reflecting popular frustration with the bogged-down war in Iraq, Republican congressional scandals and profligate spending.

Democrats who were sent to Congress from those conservative states last November did not necessarily share the views and values of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and aging liberal icon Sen. Edward Kennedy.

The $64,000 question was always whether the new members would follow the lead of their generally more liberal, senior brethren who controlled the Democratic agenda.

Freshmen Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jon Tester of Montana and Jim Webb of Virginia voted were among the 15 Democrats who helped kill the immigration bill. It turned out their votes were not decisive. The margin of defeat was so large because a majority of senators up for re-election in 2008 decided it was in their best interests to oppose the bill.

I pointed out that it would be political suicide for anyone up for election in 2008 to support that bill. It appears that the political calculus of those Senators matched mine. But the fact that the Democrats cannot count on keeping the newly-elected members from conservative states in line should tell them that it isn't a really good idea to keep pushing left. I rather doubt the leadership will pay any attention, however. They continue down a path of confrontation instead of the oft-promised bipartisanship they used to get elected. The conventional wisdom is that the 2008 elections are the Democrat's to lose. Reid and Pelosi are working on it.