Though the specific Senate retirements are a wash from an immigration perspective — Dodd was terrible while Dorgan had gotten pretty good lately — they’re still good news because, as the Journal puts it today, “The defensive mood . . . will likely force the White House to further scale back its ambitions.” And a win by Scott Brown would obviously be cause for even more scaling back; his immigration statements (see here and here) aren’t everything I’d want but are pretty good. And don’t forget that Janet Incompetano is the administration’s official point-person for Congress on an amnesty bill — her status as a laughingstock renders her essentially worthless in that role, in contrast to Michael Chertoff, her predecessor who was working personally with senators for weeks on end in 2007 and whose credibility and seriousness were a big part of the reason the amnesty bill got as far as it did.

All in all, the La Raza crowd’s got to be pretty disappointed.