Just when it seemed that the liberal winds blowing through Washington have knocked down pretty much everything in their path, another gust sweeps in and takes out a pillar of the Democratic establishment.

Michigan Representative John D. Dingell is the second-longest House member in history and has served as the chief Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee for the past 28 years. At 82, the dean of the House has an unparalleled history of ushering through complex legislation on everything from health care to energy, environment and telecommunications. Global warming was supposed to be next on his list.

But it was not to be. A newly revitalized House caucus voted 137-122 to strip him of his chairmanship and turn over the reigns to a political fireball from California, Henry Waxman. Waxman currently chairs the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, where he has been probing alleged malfeasance by the Bush administration for the past two years.

The news came a day after the longest-serving US Senator finally conceded his loss in an extraordinarily tight election. Alaska Republican Ted Stevens’ sin was a conviction on seven felony counts of failing to report gifts from industry friends. Dingell was neither accused nor convicted of anything unseemly, but the same ties to powerful industries, most notably the automakers in his hometown of Detroit, ultimately cost him his post.

“Well, this was clearly a change year, and I congratulate my colleague Henry Waxman on his success today," Dingell said in a release minutes after the vote.

So what does this mean?

We might not know for a while, but it certainly clears away one of the biggest obstacles as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, also from California, pushes for the strongest possible global warming legislation. Dingell has not exactly been a slouch on the issue, having produced the outlines of a climate bill that just two years ago would have represented revolutionary change. But he is unabashedly sympathetic to the plight of the nation’s industrialists, and many, including Waxman, Pelosi and environmentalists, wanted stricter caps on greenhouse gases.

This brings us to a second set of consequences: Dingell stood squarely in the middle and represented one place where all sides could come together to strike a bargain. Removing him might well make the process more polarized, although one could argue that it doesn’t matter all that much in the House, where leadership has plenty of tools to get what it wants.

In such a scenario, the first round of deal-making would take place almost entirely in the US Senate. Democrat leadership there will need to strike plenty of deals simply because the filibuster prevents anybody from getting their way too easily. For those not in the know, the filibuster is a procedural tactic that makes it virtually impossible to pass legislation without 60 votes.

Democrats will control at least 58 of the 100 seats next year, thanks to the elections this month. But many of those Democrats come from industrial and coal states that feel they stand to lose if carbon emissions are capped and energy costs begin to rise. Many, in other words, are a bit like Dingell.