NOT EVEN CLOSE: The Hill: Gun Bill Fails In Bipartisan Vote: “The Senate delivered a devastating blow to President Obama’s agenda to regulate guns Wednesday by defeating a bipartisan proposal to expand background checks. It failed by a vote of 54 to 46, with 5 Democrats voting against it. Only 4 Republicans supported it. . . . What appeared to be a likely victory for Obama was resoundingly defeated by the Senate as jittery Democrats facing tough re-elections next year joined nearly the entire Republican conference.”

All the shameless emotional bullying — political necromancy, really — failed. The President should be ashamed to have engaged in it, but, well, it was shameless. This is, if possible, an even bigger fail for the traditional media, who thought they could push this through on the bodies of dead kids. Apparently, that stuff doesn’t work as well as it used to — at least when, as in this case, the media abandons any sense of subtlety.

Question: Is this the kind of potency-ending debacle that Bush’s Social Security Reform defeat was in 2005?

UPDATE: National Journal: At Pivotal Point in Presidency, Obama Routed on Gun Control. “This is an unmitigated disaster.”