The net result of Real ID's failure is that Americans in some states have to show more forms of proof to get their driver's licenses and illegals still get their licenses without any impediments in states like Washington.
It was always about a federal ID card. One of its biggest backers was Al Gore, who seriously proposed it as not just that, but a gateway to a “cash-free society”, where all money was in what amounted to government controlled computers, even if it was still officially in banks.
Socialists learned of the failure of direct nationalization and control by government, because of Lenin’s experiments; but the Nazis’ fascist economics gave them the idea, popularized in the New Deal, of the “government-private partnership”. Government would order business what to do, but it was up to business to do it.
To this day, most of American Agribusiness is still using this fascist model. But the Democrats want to radically expand it to all of society.
For this they need total control over personal information, the flow of information, and control over all financial resources. Not direct, in most cases, but via corporate proxies.
REAL ID was poorly sold to the public as an antiterrorism gesture by W. Bush, who agreed with many of its authoritarian government concepts, far beyond terrorism or illegal immigration.
But in the final analysis, it is no different than gun control as an effort to control the people by the central government. Even the Russians often tell us this, because they know it from old.