Fascinating what-ifs all, but mostly irrelevant. Immigration reform was defeated by a conservative revolt that spread to the wider public. Senate opponents, gloating over their success in killing the bill, were essentially correct in insisting the American people had rejected immigration reform. ~Fred Barnes, “Things Fall Apart”

You can hear the sound of Barnes’ disappointment.  What we saw this past week was what occurs when representative government basically functions properly.  It is a strange and marvelous thing, rarely seen anymore.  We can be sure that the establishment has suffered only a temporary loss of control here.  Barnes does not quite go to Broderian or Gersonian depths in lamenting the failure of “centrism,” but he shows thinly veiled contempt for Senators who helped kill the bill because they are running for re-election or another office.  Imagine that–elected representatives responding to their constituents! 

In other words, the people have already rejected the bill now and most of the Senators in evenly divided states were afraid that they, too, would be rejected if they supported the bill.  They were all probably right.  Domenici is our senior Senator and has never had much difficulty winning re-election, and even he was evidently feeling the heat.  Bingaman, our Democratic junior Senator, isn’t even up for re-election next year and he voted nay on cloture, raising the number of Democrats who helped junk the bill to 16 (including the Independent Sanders).  People who don’t understand New Mexican politics may be confused by this, but they should remember that we have one of the poorest states that is also most adversely impacted by the ineffective security at the border and one which can hardly afford the extra strains on state services that illegal immigration already imposes.  Plus, opposition to illegal immigration in central and southern New Mexico among Republican voters is quite strong, despite the perpetual minority status of Republicans in New Mexico that would theoretically put pressure on Republicans to move towards the “center” (i.e., towards the left).  Anyone running for statewide office back home would be inciting some strong opposition if he supported this bill, and both Senators apparently got that message. 

Almost one-third of the Democratic caucus turned against the bill, and they have some common characteristics: they come entirely from purple states (Webb, McCaskill) and red states (Landrieu, Tester), which is predictable but significant.  Many were elected on economic populist platforms, and some evidently saw elements of the bill that conflicted with their populism.  The awful guest-worker provisions were likely what turned them against the bill, as well they should have.  Sherrod Brown was among those voting no.  Had the Democrats tried to whip the bill and force their members at least to vote for cloture, the tactic might not have worked, but there were enough Republicans siding with the Majority Leader that it would have passed easily had the Democrats not been so significantly divided.  For the record, 12 Republicans voted with Harry Reid on cloture, including the unexpected names of Judd Gregg and Richard Lugar.  Lugar just handily won re-election and apparently thinks he can tell his constituents to take a hike, but Gregg is up for re-election next year in 2010.  Perhaps Gregg thinks the massive blue wave swallowing New Hampshire last year was a sign that he needed to go with the majority’s leadership, but my guess is that he will eventually suffer on account of this vote.  New Hampshire voters may have thrown out the Republican bums in ’06, but that does not necessarily mean that they wanted their Senators voting in support of this bill–Sununu seems to have understood this.    

I have to say that this is a better initial outcome than I could have anticipated after the outcome of the midterms.  There had been the disturbing thought that holding Bush and the GOP accountable would simply lead to the empowerment of the worst policies and instincts of this administration in domestic policy.  Admittedly, the gain on a change in Iraq policy has been minimal, but the cost in immigration legislation has fortunately been negligible so far.  The presence of 15 Democratic Senators who opposed the progress of this bill is somewhat reassuring, in that it suggests that there may be a cloture-proof bloc in the Senate opposed to any such omnibus bills in the next Congress as well.  On immigration, there appears to be a solid group of moderate-cum-populist Democrats who were significantly opposed to so-called “comprehensive reform” (Webb, Tester, Dorgan, McCaskill, Brown).  Four of these are newly elected Senators, and it is not at all certain that all of the Republicans they defeated (Allen, Burns, Talent, and DeWine respectively) would have been as reliable in opposing the bill as they proved to be.  Some might have been, but DeWine would likely have been a yea vote.  Surprisingly, the results of the ’06 Senate elections seem to have made amnesty slightly less likely, at least for the moment.