Fresh off their successful slaughter of the public option and gleefully dashing the hopes of millions in need for the sake of the insurance industry, the Republicans in drag in the Democratic Senate caucus have set their sites on killing the next bit of good legislation, cap and trade.
“I am communicating that in every way I know how,” says Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), one of at least half a dozen Democrats who’ve told the White House or their own leaders that it’s time to jettison the centerpiece of their party’s plan to curb global warming.
“We need to deal with the phenomena of global warming, but I think it’s very difficult in the kind of economic circumstances we have right now,” said Indiana Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, who called passage of any economy-wide cap and trade “unlikely.”
“I’d just as soon see that set aside until we work through the economy,” said Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). ?“What we don’t want to do is have anything get in the way of working to resolve the problems with the economy.”
“Climate change in an election year has very poor prospects,” added Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.). “I’ve told that to the leadership.”
So let’s see, we’ve got the most conservative Democrat in the Senate (Nelson), the most corrupt Democrat in the Senate (Landreu), the guy who’s upset that he’ll never be President (Bayh), and the Senate concern troll (Conrad). Funny thing is, Blanche is missing from the list, but Pryor’s not.
“I’d prefer to do energy, because I think you could get a really broad consensus on a lot of energy legislation,” said Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.)
Now we all know that Pryor isn’t exactly a brain-trust (just a name-trust), but of all people Joe Lieberman even gets this!
But supporters of the climate bill say that cap-and-trade is an inextricable part of any energy package for next year.
“We’ve got to keep them together because they go together,” said Connecticut Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, who infuriated liberals with his opposition to the public option in the health care bill but who’s trying to keep cap-and-trade alive in a bipartisan climate bill he’s drafting with Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
Nevermind the lives that hang in the balance, like the people living on the Pacific islands are those who will be faced with drought and disease brought on by climate change. There’s never a good time for these people to govern apparently-always some reason to put it off and it’s always the same crowd. Seriously, if governing is so hard for these goons why don’t they hang up their hats??? Oh yeah…the perks of the job. More importantly, cap and trade is badly needed to fight climate change, which is arguably the most serious problem faced by all mankind. It literally concerns the fate of the entire planet, but these clowns don’t care about that, or about the people affected by it.
So why the pic of Blanche for this one? Well, for one, she’s against cap and trade, of course. But additionally, Blanche Lincoln is of interest on this and other issues of importance to progressives because she could well be facing a primary from Bill Halter (we hope!). As such, Lincoln could be pushed to the left to some degree (like Arlen Specter currently) and, more importantly, if we do replace her with a better Democrat it will put the rest of these clowns on notice.
