Obama scores major victory on climate

In private telephone conversations and last-minute public appeals, Obama leaned heavily on House Democratic holdouts to support the first energy legislation ever designed to curb global warming. The measure ended up passing in dramatic fashion.

In the end, the president's furious lobbying — coupled with a final push by allies including former Vice President Al Gore — carried much weight. To a certain extent, the victory validated Obama's governing style — and that could bode well for his other top domestic priority, health care. He faces an even more difficult test in shepherding the energy and climate legislation through the Senate.

Obama recognizes as much.

“Now my call to every senator, as well as to every American, is this: We cannot be afraid of the future. And we must not be prisoners of the past,” Obama said in his weekend Internet and radio address. He scrapped his talk on his original topic, health care, and recorded the climate bill speech shortly after the Democratic-controlled House backed the measure on a 219-212 vote late Friday.

It was a win Obama certainly needed. Congress was getting ready for a weeklong holiday break and already health care was hanging in the balance. While his popularity remains strong, Obama's overall ratings have slipped a bit. This restive nation also is wary of some of his proposals, including deficit spending as Obama pumps an enormous amount of money into the economy and elsewhere.

The narrow House vote suggests potential trouble ahead with the Democratic rank-and-file as the White House seeks to tackle more big-ticket issues in Obama's first year in office; health care tops the list.

As Congress tackles that contentious issue, Obama's left flank is beating up him and his allies over the effort to overhaul the costly and complex U.S. medical system. Moderate Democrats are looking to forge compromises to pass a measure; liberal critics are dug in over elements they want to see in any legislation. Liberal groups are running ads against senators who won't publicly support a government program to compete against private insurers.

Democrats have a comfortable House majority. But the climate legislation pitted Democrats who represent East Coast states that have been cleaning up their act against Democrats in the Mideast and other places that rely heavily on coal and industry. They have a longer, more expensive path to meet requirements in the measure. Senate passage is far from certain, given that Democrats lack the 60 votes needed to cut off a likely filibuster.

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