Our old friend Malcolm Pollack gets to the heart of the matter:
It became very clear indeed that the actual state of the Union doesn’t really interest them [the Democrats] much at all; the only thing that matters to them is the state of their power over it — which is at a providentially low ebb for at least the next several months. All of this was never supposed to happen, and the Left is very, very angry about it.
What’s that you say? The Democrats are simply upset over the fate of the poor “Dreamers”? This is now shown to be obviously, transparently false. In these last days, Mr. Trump has offered legal status to approximately two million of them. This is far more generous than anything Barack Obama ever put on the table, and is an offer, I’m sure, that any “Dreamer” would accept without a moment’s hesitation. It would grant them their fondest hope — and if the Democrats truly cared about them, as they so ostentatiously pretend to do, they would leap at the proposal themselves (which, I should point out, is as unpopular with many to Mr. Trump’s right as it is on the far Left).
So why don’t they? Why, instead, do they spit on it, and denounce it in the vilest terms? The answer is obvious: because it does not immediately give these illegal aliens the vote, and because the offer is contingent upon reducing indiscriminate immigration — legal and illegal — in the future. Let me put that another way: the Democrats will not take this offer, despite it giving so-called “Dreamers” what they most desire, because it is designed not to assure the Democrats of a continuing flood of new Democrat voters. That is all there is to it.