Democrats were eager to end debate on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security bill, but they couldn’t muster the necessary 60 votes for cloture. A Republican-led filibuster was successful in holding-off the legislation, at least for this session.

Senator Coleman missed the vote, but said he would have voted in favor of the bill.  This in spite of receiving hundreds of phone calls from angry constituents telling him to drop his support for the bill.

Even though the bill has been shelved for this session, supporters of the bill are claiming victory. They say the cloture vote would have been successful if all the bill’s stated supporters had been present to vote.  But they weren’t. 

Growing constituent opposition to the bill, driven by already high energy prices, and fear of greatly exacerbating current economic woes, put tremendous pressure on both Democrat and Republican senators to vote against the cap-and-trade scheme. Senators who missed the cloture vote may well have dodged a deadly political bullet.

Cap-and-trade supporters hope to bring the legislation forward with more support next year.