Where good bills go to die

Alex Pareene updates the count and finds a grand total of 420 bills passed by the House are now languishing in the Senate for lack of action.

As always, some of this is post office-naming. And some of it is food safety, and energy, and other things that might be nice for the country. [...]

Senate procedural reform should probably be the number one progressive priority, considering that the Senate is what is standing in the way of most other big domestic progressive goals (softening the blow of years of far-right Republican judicial appointments, appointing liberals to the Fed, fixing the nation's crumbling infrastructure, etc.) -- but I'm not holding my breath.

Nor am I holding mine. While there are certainly some legitimate and important policy criticisms being made in the progosphere, too many progressives are too busy mocking teabaggers and bitching that Obama didn't use his bully pulpit effectively enough to get their favored issue resolved to their satisfaction this hot minute, to actually engage in collective blog swarming on policy issues that might actually change the system.

You could see it coming. Bloggers started making money, obtaining press credentials and getting booked on the teevee talk shows and inexorably, the progosphere became more competitive and less collaborative. While there are more than a few notable exceptions, I look around at the powerhouses of Leftopia these days and see the same horserace coverage and obsessing about trivialities that the tradmed dines on daily. I suppose it was inevitable, but it still makes me a little sad.