Obama's gamble: Will it work?

Republicans had been licking their chops for weeks, hoping President Barack Obama would actually carry through on his immigration promise.

They had polled the issue in a handful of key races and come to a clear conclusion: If Obama circumvented Congress and acted alone this summer on immigration, conservative and independent voters would finally have an issue to rally behind and give the GOP a clear opportunity to nationalize the midterms in states where the president is deeply unpopular.

So Obama’s major reversal Saturday, announcing that he would not act alone on immigration until after the midterms, came as a huge sigh of relief for party operatives and candidates clinging to hang onto a tenuous Senate majority.

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“We are talking about 2-3 point races,” one top Democratic official said Saturday. “And there is no evidence that an executive action could help in these specific states — and a lot of evidence that it could hurt.”

The question, however, is will the delay work? The White House is betting control of the Senate will turn on more local issues and that its strategy of kicking the can down the road on immigration won’t keep its Democratic base at home on Election Day.

But there may have been little choice. Democratic Sens. Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Kay Hagan of North Carolina had already publicly broken with the White House and balked at Obama’s warnings that he’d act alone to overhaul his deportation policy of undocumented immigrants. Such a move almost certainly would have hurt other red-state Democrats, like Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, and Mark Begich in Alaska. Plus, Democratic hopes of defeating Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky also would have been a much steeper climb, both sides acknowledged privately.

(See POLITICO’s full immigration coverage)

Obama was feeling the pressure from friendlier quarters as well. In recent days, even liberal Democrat Al Franken — whose seat in Minnesota remains a reach for the GOP — came out and asked the White House to hold off. With three Democratic seats already virtually lost — South Dakota, West Virginia and Montana — an electorate angry about immigration and Republicans railing about “amnesty” would have given the GOP a much easier path to pick up the other three seats it would need to take the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his leadership team strongly support Obama moving by executive action, but they did not want him to move before the election — though they declined to take a position publicly on the timing issue for fear of angering immigration advocacy groups. The day after Labor Day, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough and Reid’s chief of staff, David Krone, discussed the issue, and Krone told the White House that any delay would not be criticized by Senate leadership, sources said.

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Obama said Saturday that political considerations over the Senate did not dictate his decision-making, arguing his reversal occurred because the flood of unaccompanied children in the Southwest border forced him to recalibrate his tactics. “And you know, the truth of the matter is — that the politics did shift midsummer because of that problem,” he said.

(Also on POLITICO: Boehner slams Obama's 'raw politics')

The main criticism Saturday came from immigration advocates — and Republicans. After the decision become public, Republicans said that the president’s decision to “conspire” on immigration with his party would only enrage the electorate. Brad Dayspring, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said that Democrats would have Obama’s “executive amnesty threats hanging over their campaigns like a storm cloud” until November....