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As expected,聽President Obama has vetoed the bill that would have fast-tracked the Keystone XL pipeline:

The bill now returns to the Congress, which will likely make at least some attempt to override the veto. In reality, though, it seems clear that there are insufficient votes in either the House or the Senate to get to the two-thirds majority required to do so. For one thing, the majority that passed the bill was well below that number in both the House and the Senate, which means that the GOP would somehow have to convince Democrats who already voted 鈥淣o鈥� on the bill once to change their vote and override Obama鈥檚 first veto in five years. That鈥檚 unlikely to happen. Indeed, it鈥檚 not even likely that all the Democrats in the House and the Senate who voted for the bill will be willing to vote to defy their party leader on a veto override.

None of this is a surprise, of course. The Obama Administration聽made it clear back in November聽when a Keystone XL bill was floated in the lame-duck session of Congress that the president would veto any bill that made it to his desk, and there was no indication that the administration鈥檚 position had changed on that issue in the ensuing months. Indeed, if anything, the administration鈥檚 position on the matter only became stronger. At its base, the justification being offered from the veto is the assertion that approval of the pipeline is something that is properly left in the jurisdiction of the executive branch, but it鈥檚 also clear that there are political motives behind the veto as well. While some Democrats have come out in support of the pipeline and indeed voted in favor of it in the House and Senate, the vast majority of the Democratic members of both houses of Congress voted against it, thanks in no small part to the environmental lobbyists who have been on a crusade to defeat the pipeline for years now. Obviously, this veto, as well as the administration鈥檚 rather obvious effort to聽鈥渟low walk鈥� any decision on the pipeline, is being made at least in part to appease this segment of the Democratic constituency.

At this point, it seems unlikely that the pipeline will be approved before President Obama leaves office. Any congressional action will be blocked by a presidential veto, and the executive branch is likely to continue dragging its feet on the matter. As I鈥檝e noted before, that鈥檚 unfortunate given the fact that the arguments in favor of the pipeline are far more convincing than those against it. Instead, it鈥檚 probable that Keystone will become an issue in the 2016 election just as it was in 2012. Given the fact that the pipeline has polled well in the past, it will be interesting to see if Hillary Clinton is as strident in opposition to the plan as President Obama has been.

Doug Mataconis appears on the Outside the Beltway blog at http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/.