the house is more progressive than the senate

And Speaker Nancy Pelosi is way more awesome than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

This election was obviously about change. Reid's interpretation of that was to keep the highly ineffective, Republican-supporting Sen. Joe Lieberman (Lieberman-CT) as the chair of the extremely powerful Senate Homeland Security Committee.

Pelosi's take? Put out the call to remove one of the major barriers to serious efforts to reverse climate change, (former) House Energy and Commerce Chair John Dingell (D-Detroit). In a huge victory for progressives, Pelosi won the fight, with fellow progressive and Californian Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) taking over the committee and paving the way for major changes to our energy policy.

Note that one of the big differences in this case was also that President-elect Obama did not step in on the behalf of fellow Congressional Black Caucus member Dingell the way he stepped in to protect Lieberman's chairmanship. Without a directive from the White House, the increasingly progressive House followed its better angels and laid the groundwork to help Obama achieve his prominent campaign promise to create 5 million "green-collar" jobs, make the United States the center of the fuel-efficient auto industry, and to reduce our carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 (not nearly enough to stop climate change, but a good start and more than we could do with Dingell blocking higher standards for emissions and fuel efficiency).

Go Progress!