Earlier this month, Nancy Pelosi signaled that, after her chamber of Congress passed virtually the entire Democratic agenda in the first half of the 111th Congress, she’d wait for the Senate to take the lead before passing anything else of note.

So how has the Senate responded? By begging the White House to let them stop passing anything of note their own selves.

Bruised by the health care debate and worried about what 2010 will bring, moderate Senate Democrats are urging the White House to give up now on any effort to pass a cap-and-trade bill next year.

“I am communicating that in every way I know how,” says Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), one of at least half a dozen Democrats who’ve told the White House or their own leaders that it’s time to jettison the centerpiece of their party’s plan to curb global warming.

The creation of an economy-wide market for greenhouse gas emissions is as the heart of the climate bill that cleared the House earlier this year. But with the health care fight still raging and the economy still hurting, moderate Democrats have little appetite for another sweeping initiative — especially another one likely to pass with little or no Republican support.

“We need to deal with the phenomena of global warming, but I think it’s very difficult in the kind of economic circumstances we have right now,” said Indiana Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, who called passage of any economy-wide cap and trade “unlikely.”

It goes further than that, actually. Joe Lieberman, who is one of three Senators working on comprehensive climate and energy legislation, said this week, “I don’t think the Senate has an appetite for another such epic, polarized legislative war this session.” He said it in the context of coming up with a more industry-friendly bill that emphasized domestic production, but I don’t believe anyone should expect more than a stray Republican vote here or there for anything on the legislative agenda. That comprises not only energy and climate legislation, but divisive issues like immigration, labor law, gay rights, financial regulatory reform, you name it.

Apparently everything must be dropped for a “jobs bill,” but anything that uses more than the price of a cup of coffee from the US Treasury will be described as an “orgy of spending,” and thus will become naturally polarized. As long as Republicans stick together, the same will be true of everything else, and President Lieberman simply cannot have that.

It would be nice for voters to know that they actually elect their representatives to one-year terms, with the alternating year spent naming the maximum number of post offices that the law will allow.

(But that’s only when Democrats are in power. When Republicans hold the White House, large initiatives like authorizing the Iraq war, creating the Department of Homeland Security, the Military Commissions Act, and any of a myriad of other initiatives can occur in an election year.)