This Rolling Stone article is very good at providing the details of the usual Congressional charade of dealing with issues that the public wants, but that the ruling class opposes. Thus Congress and the President must go through the motions of appearing to support something the public wants, but somehow things just don't turn out right, and then comes the blame game.
Liberal environmental bloggers are all over the internet commenting on this article and "wringing their hands", and looking for some kind of positive spin on it. Most of these bloggers and the environmental movement as a whole are comprised of middle class people who mean well, but are tied to the coattails of the ruling class and the system that supports them both--capitalism. They will rarely, if ever, question the system that produces this kind of theater in Washington. Some even go so far as to blame the public for the political disaster. See this.
Then they make all kinds of excuses or lame explanations as to why a climate bill is dead. See this, in which the blogger makes the following statements:
Since Obama ignored the call for direct personal involvement on comprehensive climate and energy action, one can only assume he is just not that into it.What the bloggers and much of the environmental movement don't get is that capitalism is the engine that is driving us off the cliffs of climate change, resource exhaustion, and environmental degradation.
Since team Obama sucks at messaging so badly, it's impossible to know whether any strategy would have worked.
Fundamentally, Rahm and Axelrod simply don't get global warming.