Hundreds of thousands of people protested to support comprehensive immigration reform in all parts of the country today. And this is a preview of tomorrow's major protests when millions are expected to turn out.

In Dallas, as many as 500,000 people took to the streets to show their support.

But while Texas had the largest rally of the day, large crowds showed up in many other cities. 180,000 turned out in Washington, D.C. 30,000 turned out in Minnesota, Iowa. 50,000 marched in San Diego. And similar scenes played out in New Mexico, Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa, Alabama, Utah, Oregon, Idaho and Mississippi.

Rallies are set in 136 cities around the country tomorrow and more than 2 million people are expected to participate. And the rallies will start to include representative of other immigrant groups.

In San Francisco, the ZChinese community wil parade out of Chinatown. Haitians will turn out in Miami. And Africans will turn out in anothe r protest in Washington.

Want to show your support and attend one of the April 10th rallies? Go to http://www.cccaction.org/cccaction/april_10_local_events.html

If you listened to President Bush in today's radio address and Senator Frist during yesterday's floor statements, Harry Reid and Democratic allies never really wanted to get a bill passed and used the amendment dispute as a way to keep the bill from getting to a vote. Why? Because they didn't want to give the Republicans a victory on this issue and are hoping to make immigration an issue in the November election.

Listen to Reid and the fault all lies with the Republicans who are intent on figuring out a way to gut the Hegel-Martinez compromise either via amendments or in the conference committee. The Democrats are just trying to keep the Republicans honest.

Whose right? Well, there certainly is plenty of fingerpointing. Marc Cooper, the pro-immigration liberal columnist for the Nation actually has some not so kind words for Senator Reid:

What we didn't anticipate it is what appears to be the ignominious role played by Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid. I had written, as recently as Thursday, that it looked like his GOP counter-part, Bill Frist, was actually the guy who was going to scuttle what has been the five-year long effort to enact comprehensive reform. But then, the whole story took yet another unexpected turn. An authentic bi-partisan majority was reached in support of an imperfect but significant compromise: a bill that would liberalize and expand legalized immigration as well as grant legal status to six or seven million "illegals" already living here.

And then, on Friday, defeat snatched from victory. The whole deal collapses. And while the reasons are myriad, and while the back-room bickering may never be fully disclosed, there's a whole lot of anecdotal evidence that Harry Reid intentionally blocked the deal. There is an argument to be made that he did the right thing i.e. to "protect" the core of the bill. There's a much stronger argument that Reid simply didn't want to hand a legislative victory to an unpopular Majority Leader and his equally unpopular President. And to hell with the 7 million immigrants who might have benefitted.

This is not some right-wing conspiracy theory. You can find it in Friday's daily press briefing (not yet online) from the non-partisan but certainly Democrat-friendly and liberal leaning National Immigration Forum.

According to a behind-the-scenes story in Time Magazine, the Democrats are hardly united behind Reid. Senator Kennedy, according to Time, is furious at the maneuver. On the other hand, Time indicates that Reid's fears regarding what would happen in the conference committee are not trivial. If the bill gets gutted in the conference committee and then comes back to the Senate for a vote, it might be "political suicide" for the Democrats to vote against it.

And there is some reason to believe this is true. Look what happened in the House in December. A number of Democrats in vulnerable, right-leaning seats. My own Congressman is the perfect example. He's not anti-immigrant. But he's a Democrat now running for Senate in Tennessee, one of the so-called "red states." He would vote for a guest worker program if it were part of an immigration bill. But there's no way he would vote against a border enforcement bill in the middle of a campaign.

Personally, I think the amendments argument is not that strong. The Republicans seem willing to limit the number of amendments to a reasonable number like twenty so the "filibuster by amendment" argument is one that I don't buy. The Democrats also have the votes to stop the worst of the amendments or at least alter them so they don't destroy the substance of the deal. But I do think the conference committee fears are a real issue. So getting some assurance that the Senators on the conference will walk away from the table if the bill is being destroyed is key. I'll leave it to the politicians to figure out how to get such a guarantee.

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