Adam Serwer:
The Wall Street Journal reports Democrats are ready to cave on DADT in the lame duck:
Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and John McCain of Arizona, the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, are in talks on stripping the proposed repeal and other controversial provisions from a broader defense bill, leaving the repeal with no legislative vehicle to carry it. With a repeal attached, and amid Republican complaints over the terms of the debate, the defense bill had failed to win the 60 votes needed to overcome a procedural hurdle in the Senate in September.
Look, if Democrats can't repeal a policy more than two thirds of the American people, including a majority of conservatives want gone then they can't expect people to vote for them. Preserving DADT is rank absurdity, even in 1993 the RAND study commissioned by the government showed that combat effectiveness would not be harmed by allowing openly gay servicemembers to serve, and the fact that DADT investigations are sometimes delayed when servicemembers are deployed undermines the notion that openly gay servicemembers harm the war effort.
The plain fact of the matter is that DADT undermines the military by forcing discharges of servicemembers with critical skills and walling off an entire section of the population from recruitment. The only remaining arguments for preserving DADT are premised on archaic cultural attitudes towards homosexuality, and Republicans' insistence on undermining the military by blocking repeal is vanity, a projection of their own superficial prejudices onto the very servicemembers they claim to respect.
This was all perfectly predictable. The Versailles Democrats never do anything that a supermajority of Americans support. Close down bankrupt banks? Pass the public option? End the Afghan War? Let gays and lesbians serve in the military? That's all unthinkable. Instead, Versailles Dems lie and say it's a position of "the professional left." Because, I guess, that's true in the cocktail party circles they run in.
Real Americans don't do Versailles cocktail parties. Real Americans would vote Democratic by 60% margins or more...if only they could get rid of the Versailles Dems.
Versailles Dem #1 is still saying, 'I oppose ending DADT through the courts. I want Congress to do it.' But as of right now, any fool can see that Congress isn't going to do it. Any more than Congress was ready to pass the Civil Rights Act in 1948, when Truman forced the military to integrate.
Fierce advocate? Fierce chihuahua, maybe.
But I shouldn't ought to say that. A real fierce chihuahua might take offense. And then I'd be in real trouble.
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