The Border Deal was, like most bipartisan enterprises, a Catch 22.

A. Either Democrats would get a border deal that would let them keep the border open while also getting credit for a legislative solution.

B. Or they would get to blame Republicans for the border crisis.

Table A would have been nice, but they’ll happily take Table B. Much like ‘War Games’, the only way to win this one would have been not to play, but a few Senate Republicans insisted on letting the Gang 3 set them up to lose.

And Dems, from Biden on down, and their media are in full swing claiming that Trump made Republicans tank the border deal in order to sabotage Biden.

Like most forms of projection, the truth is backward.

Biden and the Dems were not really expecting a border deal. By the time they unveiled their proposal, Speaker Mike Johnson had already warned them that it would be dead in the House. They went ahead and carried on, for the same reason that the House voted on an Israel bill, and for the same reason that both houses repeatedly vote on things they know will not pass in the other.

How much of the public can be convinced now that the border crisis is the fault of Republicans? Probably not that many Republicans or even Independents, but it’s a message that Democrats will feel comfortable with and you can expect the media to bring it up every time Republicans refer to the border crisis.

That’s what this was really about.

Had Biden and the Democrats seriously wanted to secure the border, the bill would have done that, instead of providing discretionary opportunities to possibly secure the border, if Biden chooses to use them, while still bringing millions of illegal invaders into America and adding less than a week’s worth of detention capacity.

Whether Republicans will effectively be able to make those arguments is another question.