You could call it an idea whose time has not quite come — and, given opinion polls, is unlikely to come.

But what you can now call the controversial plan by New York Governor Elliot Spitzer to grant drivers licenses to illegal aliens is this:

Dead:

Gov. Eliot Spitzer is abandoning his plan to issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, saying that opposition is just too overwhelming to move forward with such a policy.

The governor, who is to announce the move formally on Wednesday, said in an interview Tuesday night that he did not reach the decision easily.

“You have perhaps seen me struggle with it because I thought we had a principled decision, and it’s not necessarily easy to back away from trying to move a debate forward,” he said.

But he came to believe the proposal would ultimately be blocked, he said, either by legal challenges, a vote by the Legislature to deny financing for the Department of Motor Vehicles or a refusal by upstate county clerks to carry it out.

“I am not willing to fight to the bitter end on something that will not ultimately be implemented,” the governor said, “and we also have an enormous agenda on other issues of great importance to New York State that was being stymied by the constant and almost singular focus on this issue.”

Spitzer was in a lose-lose situation. If he stuck with it, he’d be denounced by one side. If he scuttled the plan, he’d be denounced by the other.

Even worse: if the Democratic campaign of New York Senator Hillary Clinton unravels and she fails to get the nomination, pundits are likely to the point to her inability to give a solid answer to questions about this proposal as the moment when a seemingly-seamless campaign showed its seams…and fell apart.

Additionally, in the polls and among top New York State politicos the proposal had become about as popular as Michael Richards performing his comedy act at a NAACP convention. Newsday notes:

Democrats and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg had pressured the governor to drop the proposal, which garnered the support of only one-third of New Yorkers, according to polls.

“The heat was rising on Eliot, and he reacted,” said one Spitzer ally, among a handful of Democrats the governor reached out to Tuesday night.

Spitzer is expected to tell the delegation that “immigration is a federal, not a state issue,” said one congressional source familiar with the governor’s thinking.

That explanation is virtually identical to Clinton’s statements on the issue — and gives the Democratic front-runner a ready-made answer when the topic is inevitably raised at tomorrow’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas.

But, given the erosion of Clinton’s aura of “inevitability” due to her original answer on the issue, will it be too little too late?

According to the Buffalo News, Spitzer faced a virtual rebellion on this issue — from groups and New York staters across the boards. Worse (for him): his once stellar, shining poll ratings had begun to dim:

Spitzer has been facing gloomy prospects over his license plan. A new poll out Tuesday showed his standing among voters plummeting because of the issue.

Senate Republicans were already threatening to make a major issue out of the policy during next spring’s budget talks, which could halt action on other matters. Furthermore, Spitzer already had said he was delaying the licensing policy for up to a year.

The opposition spread wildly in recent weeks. While it drew the expected partisan rebukes from Republicans in the Legislature, Democrats, too, joined in, as did the mayor of New York City, a former commissioner of the federal Sept. 11 commission, family members of victims of the 9-11 terrorist attacks and others. The most vocal critics, though, were county clerks, who run motor vehicle offices for the state.

In all, 20 clerks said they would not implement the policy … which drew threats of legal action by Spitzer. Erie County Clerk Kathleen C. Hochul, a Democrat appointed earlier this year by Spitzer, said she would call local police agencies to have illegal immigrants arrested and deported if they sought a driver’s license in one of her branches.

For Democrats, the policy announcement by Spitzer … which reversed a state program begun after the 2001 terrorist attacks … was poison. They angrily denounced Spitzer for unveiling it a month before the November elections, which gave Republican candidates an instant message with which to campaign in local contests.

The policy also helped drive down the poll numbers for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic presidential campaign. Originally, she avoided stating her position, but then in a recent Democratic debate Clinton both supported and opposed the plan, leading opponents to tag her as waffling on an important immigration issue.

And Spitzer just had to look at his own numbers to see the possible punches in the upcoming ballots, the Albany Times Union notes:

The new poll showed that his favorability rating had fallen below 50 percent for the first time ever, a remarkable fall for a candidate who swept into office with nearly 70 percent of the vote a year ago. Even fellow Democrats joined in bashing Spitzer, giving resonance to poll responses that showed just 25 percent of New Yorkers would vote to re-elect the governor and 49 percent would prefer to elect “someone else” in 2010.

Of course, he had faced lousy poll numbers on this issue before….but…:

A month earlier, talking about a Siena poll that also showed heavy opposition among voters, the governor was more defensive, saying he does not look at or respond to polls.

“At the end of the day, when what you do is right, I have confidence the public will be supportive and I’m sure that will happen,” he said then. “I’ve undertaken an issue now I deeply believe is right in terms of security for the state, in terms of knowing who is driving … The last thing you will ever see me do is govern based on the popularity of an issue.”

But when you’re under attack by Republicans, pressured by Democrats, pointed to as possibly causing the deconstruction of a Presidential candidate, vilified by talk show hosts and called names by Lou Dobbs, what’s a governor to do?