I would have had a lot more to report, but HuffPo and TPM (here and here) beat me to the punch.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend the first half of the summit – I was covering a conference on Iran for most of the morning and into the early afternoon.  So I missed Reid, Schumer and Menendez.

Moreover, I was lucky to be in the room at all.  I had not been invited and the room was overbooked and bumping up against its capacity.  If I hadn’t run into Senator Stabenow in the hallway and asked for help, I’da been out in the cold.

The first panel I caught was supposed to be about health care, but it diverged wildly.  Before you know it, we were talking about the broad spectrum of progressive trials and tribulations.  Senator Stabenow said it best, “It’s been a hard year for us.”  Both Stabenow and Sanders implored us to uncurl the circular firing squad and train our fire on conservatives.  And then Senator Stabenow turned the floor over to Ed Schultz so he could say his peace.

Ed despaired at the lack of a Democratic message machine.  He recalled the discipline with which Republicans fanned out across the networks to push for their agenda when they had the reins, and wondered why we aren’t seeing something similar from Reid and Schumer and Dodd.  Senator Stabenow had much to say in response and seemed to take Ed’s point, but she also raised a defense:  that some Democratic Senators are afraid to go on progressive programs because they’ll be forced to play defense.  She went on to suggest that she’d like to see more of us doing more to provide cover and defend the Democratic caucus against the constant barrage of nonsense-charges leveled by the right-wing noise machine.

At that, John Arivosis stood up to call bull-shit.  He pointed out that this has become a fairly common charge and that it’s coming from all quarters of the administration and Congress.  To him, the idea was eye-ball popping ludicrous; who’s done a more effective job of carrying the progressive message than bloggers and new media?  Democrats certainly aren’t being served well by Chris Matthews, Brit Hume, Wolf Blitzer, and Howie Klein!  If anyone has had the back of Democrats, it was the people in that room.

The Senators began to respond when I stood up and suggested that it probably makes sense for them to do what is in their own power to help themselves, and if there is trouble with the progressive media, it stems from the fact that the progressive wing of the Senate hasn’t done much by way of acting in their own interest.

There was a chart behind Senator Stabenow.  The top line said that 14,000 people would die every year for want of health insurance.  I said that should mean something to progressives in the Senate.  That we’re frustrated because even as progressives form the majority of the Democratic caucus, they do nothing to impose party discipline…  That Harry Reid says there will be no consequences imposed on Democrats provide crucial support for Republican filibusters, and instead of demanding party discipline on procedural votes by asserting their numbers, the progressives in the caucus accept Reid’s leadership.   As a result, Blanche Lincoln, for example, can join with Republicans to filibuster health care reform, cap and trade, EFCA and any number of other progressive policies.  As far as I can tell, progressives in the caucus could force her out of her Agriculture Committee Chair if they wanted to, but so far they’ve decided to cave to her demands instead.  It’s enough to make a guy wonder why they bother with the chart citing 14,000 lost lives every year.

Senator Stabenow told me she didn’t think I was being fair.  I didn’t get why, but Senator Brown quickly jumped in with some welcome news.  He told us that Committee Chairs will be up for election in the next Congress and that nobody is guaranteed to keep their seat.  Ryan Grim brings some expert analysis:

“We’re going to elect committee chairs next year,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). “The current chairs that are sitting there now understand that we’ll be electing chairs next year,” he added, saying the idea had been cleared with Senate leadership.

Under current rules, members of the caucus can weigh in by objecting to an overall Senate organizing resolution, but don’t have an up-or-down vote on each chair.

Historically, the seniority system has been one of the chief obstacles to legislative progress. It is more difficult to continuously get elected to the Senate — or to get elected at a young age — in a big state, rather than a small state. That imbalance means that the most senior members of the Senate are almost all from rural, conservative states, giving them outsized influence in a chamber where they already have outsized influence because of minority protections and the two-per-state makeup of the chamber.

The next panel covered energy and the green economy.  There was a lot of talk about putting a price on carbon and messaging, and frankly, the presenters (Bingaham, Boxer, Cardin and Shaheen) didn’t sound all that optimistic about the fortunes of the legislation.  The entire hour-plus went by without a single mention of nuclear power.  I thought that was striking – nukes used to be a flash-point of debate and very controversial.  But President Obama recently announced billions for new nuke plants and the news went over with a collective yawn.  I wondered if progressives were supportive of the new policy and if we got any concessions (on, for example, new source review or cooperation with energy legislation) from power companies in exchange for jump-starting the nuke process.

Boxer mentioned that she has long-standing reservations with regards to nuclear because of the waste issue (the stuff is deadly for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of years.  By way of comparison, the Egyptian pyramids are about 3,000 years old; the earliest human civilizations sprung up less than 10,000 years ago), but that she sees nuclear as an inevitable component of energy policy.  She added that power companies are on board because they want an alternative to burning coal – especially if they are facing a levy on emissions.  I followed up by asking if it is an efficient use of money – how many solar panels could we construct for all the billions we’re committing to nukes?  Cardin weighed in saying that we aren’t spending too much (most of what’s being offered are loan guarantees) and that if we don’t do nukes, we’ll be burning more coal and sending more money to troublesome parts of the world in exchange for oil.

Here’s a bit from TPM’s report:

The progressive Senators tasked with guiding a climate change bill through the back-logged Senate say they’re ready to grease the legislative wheels with nuclear power. Speaking at the Progressive Media Summit this afternoon, Senators said it was time to embrace the atom as the key to comprehensive climate change legislation this year.

“I happen to be one of the Senators who’s concerned about waste,” Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said. “But most progressives in the Senate believe nuclear power is part of the solution at this time.”

…

Obama’s environmental proposals include the construction of new nuclear power plants for the first time in decades, which Obama and nuclear proponents say are the best short-term way to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuel-burning power generation.

Conservatives have long been in favor of new nuclear plants. Now it seems that the Senate’s left wing — once the home to the strongest critics of nuclear power — is on board with Obama’s plan.

“If we don’t expand nuclear power, there are going to be more coal plants and more oil plants,” Cardin said. “Nuclear power has been accepted as part of the solution [to climate change] among progressives.”

And that was my day at the progressive media summit.