ROLL CALL: After Gun Defeat, Where Does Obama Go From Here? “The president is vowing that the fight for tighter gun control measures is not over. But Obama’s cachet in Congress has always been low, and it appears his strategy for continuing to push the issue largely rests on something that has proved elusive to him in other recent policy fights, including this one: public pressure. . . . Despite public declarations of optimism from supporters on background checks, sources said privately that the Senate may never be able to pass those items. Republicans and many red-state Democrats — four of whom defected on the background check bill — still fear the repercussions of crossing the National Rifle Association.”

Also, their constituents. Gun-control supporters also poisoned the well immediately after Newtown by accusing the NRA, and gun-rights supporters generally, of being accomplices to murder — when they weren’t actually calling for them to be shot. That polarized things, making it harder for those swing Senators to endorse a bill. This sort of politics may be emotionally satisfying to Obama’s base, but Obama’s base wasn’t big enough to pass the bill.

The result: Headlines like the one above, or this one from The Hill: Senators reject gun control in devastating blow to Obama.