The Lieberman-Warner bill will … happen

((2008predictions_include))

The Lieberman-Warner climate bill will go to the Senate floor.

After a largely uneventful committee hearing, LW is set to be introduced on the floor of the Senate in the early months of 2008, where it will face a bruising battle. Of that I feel certain. Subpredictions about which I feel only certain-ish:

• Inhofe will put on a clown show. He and other fossil fuel dead-enders will introduce hundreds of amendments attempting to water the bill down. Some small fraction of the amendments will pass.
• The coal industry will run a multimillion-dollar ad campaign trying to convince the public that passage of the bill would yield financial ruin for little old ladies, moral degeneracy for our youth, and the death of untold ponies.
• The Washington Post‘s gullible buffoonery aside, Bush will threaten to veto anything but a fatally weakened bill.
• After a show of "negotiating" much like the one that occurred around the energy bill, Senate Republicans will threaten a filibuster.

Dems couldn’t get 60 votes for cloture to remove a few Big Oil subsidies in support of renewable energy. Will they be able to get 60 on a bill that would reshape the economy? Color me skeptical.

My unofficial and roughly 32-percent-confident prediction: The bill will get watered down; Republicans will still threaten veto; a cloture vote will fail; rather than force a veto, Reid will let the bill die.