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This is pretty funny. In an otherwise great piece from The Nation on the rather sudden "greening" of congress, we get this lead:

There's no question that America's environmentalists won big in the midterm elections. "We picked up twenty new environmental votes in the House of Representatives and five in the Senate, plus four governorships," says Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, who called 2006 "the most successful midterm election in the environmental movement's history."

Five in the Senate... Nice. Because, of course, winning the seat in Rhode Island, and thus winning the majority in the Senate, won't have any impact on environmental policies. No no... No difference between having Barbara Boxer and James Inhofe as chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. None whatsoever. The agendas they set are apparently one in the same.

I stand by my previous claims: Carl Pope really has no idea how politics have changed over the last ten years. Yes, Sierra Club does great work. But until they understand that, for better or for worse, partisanship matters, they are never going to be able to affect the kind of change they claim to seek.

UPDATE: Want the longer version? Kos takes down both Sierra Club and NARAL.

Again, for the record... I really do wish politics worked the way it once did. I wish both sides valued bipartisanship equally. I wish one side didn't openly equate it with "date rape." But they do. And wishing and hoping that they will change their minds simply because you want them to is as likely to succeed as wishing magical ponies are going to appear outside your bedroom window in the morning.