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Anyone who voted for Obama in 2008, has been disappointed by the lack of moxie that his administration has shown ever since, and who looks to the mid-terms elections with significant trepidation, should read Ryan Lizza's insightful review of the death of climate change legislation in the Senate. The president places the environmental issue at the absolute top of his priority list, the chief of staff declares that the White House isn't going to push at all until and unless sixty votes can be counted, and guess who wins?
Kind of like when the Republicans decided that Dick Cheney was the best hand to steady an inexperienced George W. Bush, the Democrats apparently decided that Rahm Emanuel was just the person to keep a green (in more than one way) Obama and an unpredictable Joe Biden under control. As with Cheney, the power behind the throne effectively took over the power of the throne. Neither story, at least to this point, ends happily.
Not that the Kerry/Graham/Lieberman bill was, in any objective sense, a big step, but at least it was a step. Rahm Emanuel apparently decided that climate legislation needed to be sacrificed on the twin altars of bipartisanship and electoral politics. Not that there's been any bipartisanship that anyone has noticed, and not that the Dem's electoral position even after the sacrifice looks particularly strong. As horse trades go, that one doesn't look like a winner.
If only Richard M. Daley could have retired one term earlier.
