To the sur­prise of no one at all, a bill to raise the fed­er­al min­im­um wage to $10.10 failed to ad­vance in the Sen­ate Wed­nes­day, gar­ner­ing less than the 60 votes needed to move ahead. The bill failed 54-42, with Sen. Bob Cork­er the only Re­pub­lic­an vot­ing to ad­vance it.

But that’s not really the point. Demo­crats have pledged to bring the bill back up again and again.

In real­ity, the min­im­um-wage bill is one part of Demo­crats’ 2014 elec­tion-year le­gis­lat­ive agenda, in­ten­ded to en­er­gize voters and draw a con­trast between Demo­crats and the GOP. Pres­id­ent Obama has been cam­paign­ing on it, and Sen­ate Demo­crats have been mes­saging the bill for months, pitch­ing it as a wo­men’s is­sue (two-thirds of those earn­ing the min­im­um wage are wo­men), and one that will par­tic­u­larly help low-in­come Amer­ic­ans and vet­er­ans.

Of course, Demo­crats would have loved to see the bill ad­vance. But they’ve known its weak pro­spects for some time, as Sen­ate Re­pub­lic­ans have stood united against rais­ing the wage to $10.10. Even Re­pub­lic­an deal-maker Sen. Susan Collins failed to find enough sup­port for her po­ten­tial al­tern­at­ive pro­pos­al to raise the fed­er­al wage at a lower level. And Sen­ate Ma­jor­ity Lead­er Harry Re­id and Demo­crat­ic Sen. Tom Har­kin, the au­thor of the le­gis­la­tion, have in­sisted they won’t budge from the $10.10 level.

Har­kin says it’s not un­com­mon for a min­im­um-wage hike to fail on the first go-around. “If Re­pub­lic­ans are con­cerned about it, they might want to vote on it now and get over it be­fore we get too close to the elec­tion,” he said Tues­day.

His pro­pos­al would raise the wage from $7.25 to $10.10 over 30 months. It would also in­crease the wage for tipped work­ers from $2.13 an hour to 70 per­cent of the fed­er­al min­im­um wage.

The Re­pub­lic­an ob­jec­tion is that rais­ing the min­im­um wage at that rate would cost the eco­nomy jobs. They cite a Con­gres­sion­al Budget Of­fice re­port that it could re­duce the labor force by 500,000 in 2016 (while also lift­ing 900,000 people out of poverty). That ana­lys­is has been chal­lenged by Demo­crats.

Cork­er, the only Re­pub­lic­an to vote for the meas­ure, ex­plained his sup­port for ad­van­cing the bill after the vote. “I just think de­bat­ing how you’re gonna im­prove the stand­ard of liv­ing of Amer­ic­ans is an im­port­ant thing to do,” he said. But he doesn’t think Re­pub­lic­ans are in a bad spot for block­ing the bill. “I think the reas­on that so many people” voted against it, he said, “is that they did feel like it was a polit­ic­al ex­er­cise. I un­der­stand that.”

Sen. John Thune, a mem­ber of Re­pub­lic­an lead­er­ship, also called the vote is “a polit­ic­al ex­er­cise” for Demo­crats. “I’m sure they figured to get something out of it.”

Hours after Re­pub­lic­ans blocked the bill, Obama spoke from the White House, say­ing “if there is any good news here it’s that Re­pub­lic­ans in Con­gress don’t get the last word on this is­sue or any is­sue, you do.”

He con­tin­ued: “Do not get dis­cour­aged by the vote like the one we saw this morn­ing. Get fired up. Get or­gan­ized. Make your voices heard.”

But will they? It’s still un­clear wheth­er the is­sue is something that will en­er­gize the Demo­crat­ic base enough to turn out in Novem­ber, but Demo­crats are com­bin­ing it with oth­er le­gis­lat­ive pushes, such as the Paycheck Fair­ness Act, which also failed to ad­vance in the Sen­ate.

Demo­crats also in­sist the min­im­um-wage is­sue res­on­ates with not just the base, but swing voters as well. To wit, the min­im­um-wage hike didn’t scare off some of the most vul­ner­able Sen­ate Demo­crats fa­cing reelec­tion, as some of their home states are also con­sid­er­ing in­creas­ing their min­im­um wages. Sen. Kay Hagan of North Car­o­lina has been mes­saging around it; Sen. Mark Be­gich of Alaska has whole­heartedly em­braced it.

Some Demo­crats up for reelec­tion have voiced con­cerns with the par­tic­u­lars of Sen­ate bill, such as Sens. Mark Warner of Vir­gin­ia and Mary Landrieu of Louisi­ana, either be­cause of the $10.10 rate or the pro­vi­sion to in­crease the wage for tipped work­ers. But even they all sup­port rais­ing the fed­er­al min­im­um wage from where it is now.

The only Demo­crat who was ex­pec­ted to vote against clo­ture on Wed­nes­day, Sen. Mark Pry­or of Arkan­sas, is ab­sent from Wash­ing­ton all week, fol­low­ing deadly storms in his home state. He sup­ports a bal­lot ini­ti­at­ive in Arkan­sas to raise the state wage from $6.25 to $8.50 by 2017. Four sen­at­ors in total were ab­sent from Wed­nes­day’s vote.

Re­id switched his vote to no as a mat­ter of pro­ced­ure, so he can bring the bill back up for a vote later.

Demo­crats think it’s smart to bring the bill back up be­fore Novem­ber, even if it keeps fail­ing.

“If it was up to me, I would vote on the min­im­um wage 10 times between now and the elec­tion, if we had the op­por­tun­ity,” said Demo­crat­ic Sen. Chris Murphy of Con­necti­c­ut. “It’s pretty im­port­ant to show the dif­fer­ence between the two parties on this is­sue.”

This post was up­dated Wed­nes­day af­ter­noon with the pres­id­ent’s com­ments from the White House.