Heaping scorn on Obama for delaying action on immigration, Beutler fears that the decision will come back to bite the president and his party should Democrats lose the Senate:
Obama will have placed himself in an incredibly awkward position. He will still be bound by his modified pledge to announce deportation relief before the end of the year, but will have to act in the aftermath of an election Republicans just won opposing what they tendentiously describe as “executive amnesty.” They’ll rewrite the story of their victory around their position on deportation.
The delay might also motivate some Democrats to stay home in November, Suderman suggests:
The potential flip side … is the move could depress turnout amongst pro-immigration Democrats. And it’s clear that immigration activists are not happy. The administration says the move is still coming, but there’s skepticism that it could be put off permanently.
“All the progress we’ve made over two years was destroyed in six weeks,” ImmigrationWorks USA head Tamar Jacoby told The New York Times. “Given the string of broken promises from this president to the Latino community on immigration, there is a real question as to whether he will follow through,” America’s Voice director said to the paper. But the administration seems to have decided it’s worth the risk. Basically, the White House is betting that the GOP’s negative response to a pre-election announcement would be more significant than whatever effect this has on Democratic turnout.
Sargent, on the other hand, sees Democrats playing a long game:
Democrats have an interest in seeing this happen just before the GOP presidential primary, because it makes it more likely the GOP candidates will out-demagogue one another in calling for Obama’s protections from deportation for millions to be rolled back, pulling the GOP field to the right of Mitt Romney’s “self deportation” stance in 2012.
Byron York shakes his head at the way Obama has punted on this issue for years:
During the days when his power was at its peak, Obama pursued higher-priority issues even as he led immigration activists to believe they were up next. Which leads to the conclusion that perhaps immigration reform — the substance of it, not the politics — has never been all that important to the president. Now, there’s still something more important: protecting vulnerable Democrats from voter disapproval of unilateral presidential action on immigration. Obama says he will finally act, after the election, after voters can no longer hold him or his party accountable. But who knows? Maybe something more important will come up yet again.
Douthat holds out hope for a less imperial solution:
[T]here is another possibility, which is that Caesarism delayed will eventually become Caesarism eschewed altogether … or else that Obama will eventually do something unilaterally on immigration, but it will be much more modest (a down payment on reform, the White House can tell activists) than what’s been floated and promised these last few months. Maybe the politics will keep looking somewhat ugly, maybe Democrats up for election in purple states in 2016 will pressure Obama to keep punting — or maybe the president will actually heed some of the criticism of his plan and revert to a more modest conception of how presidential power should be exercised on this issue. I’m not such a cynic that I don’t believe the last scenario is impossible, and it’s a good reason for the White House’s critics to be pleased with this delay: Sure, it could be setting us up for an even balder power grab in four months, but where there’s procrastination there’s hope, and a journey away from executive overreach could begin with exactly this kind of step.
The Dish 