A stunning new documentary on HBO paints a grim picture of why immigration reform went down in flames in 2007,  the summer that we all learned what "cloture" meant.

"The Senators' Bargain" shows how hard the late Senator Ted Kennedy worked to drive a bargain between the two sides of the Senate during the summer of 2007.

Esther Olavarria from Kennedy's office and Frank Sharry who was then with the National Immigration Forum are shown working tirelessly amid a tsunami of noise from the right-wing championed by Lou Dobbs and Ann Coulter.

Dobbs and Coulter in particular shilled a shrill opposition.

But the bill was also killed by pro-immigration advocates.

Unlike last week's health care vote when Democrats held hands and held their noses and voted for progress, people on both sides "picked the bill to death."

They nibbled it to death protesting that it wasn't good enough.

Even as immigration heavyweights such as Clarissa Martinez from the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform and Cecilia Munoz from the National Council of La Raza signed on, the idealists signed off.

Three years on immigrants are still being deported and people are still marooned in jobs with no legal status.

Sometimes the perfect really is the enemy of the good.