How the Dems Bungled DADT's Repeal

With majorities in Congress and Obama in the Oval Office, Don't Ask, Don't Tell's repeal should have been a slam dunk for the Dems.

For all practical purposes, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal is dead for the foreseeable future and there is plenty of blame to go around in both parties. Republicans may have opposed repeal in large numbers but Democrats had majorities in the House, the Senate, and controlled the Oval Office for the past two years.

Barack Obama will have some explaining to do before his gay supporters come 2012. The President will blame Republicans but there is no denying that the White House was AWOL on DADT repeal until the final hours of the fight. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also bungled the repeal vote badly -  not once, but twice, by refusing to compromise with moderate Republicans who were willing to support repeal if given the chance to fairly debate amendments.

The failure to repeal DADT displays a failure of leadership by the Obama White House on what should have been an easy victory for the President. Repeal is overwhelmingly popular among Democrats who control both houses of Congress; and even a majority of Republican voters support repeal.  Multiple studies have found no rational basis for banning gays from serving openly and the experience of our NATO allies with gay servicemembers has been positive as well.

Unit cohesion, readiness and morale have not been affected in NATO countries which have eliminated bans on gays serving in the military. Despite warnings that large numbers of troops would leave the military if gays could serve openly, no such mass defections actually took place. Similar threats to leave the service were reported prior to Truman’s desegregation order but did not happen either. It is unlikely that the U.S. military would see a large exodus of its volunteer force should DADT be repealed. Younger troops, by and large, just do not feel threatened by serving with gay soldiers. The current study found that many soldiers are already working alongside servicemembers they know or believe to be gay and just don’t care.

The supposedly non-partisan gay lobbying group Human Rights Campaign will also have to explain how its cozy relationship with the Obama White House wasn’t related to its repeated failure to hold Obama to account on repeal.  The past two years HRC came across as more interested in garnering White House invites for cocktails than in actual lobbying for change.  Already some in the gay community are calling for the resignation of HRC president Joe Solmonese. Could calls from the liberal gay community for Harry Reid’s resignation as Senate Leader be far behind? DADT repeal should have been a slam-dunk. It was bungled badly by both the White House and by Senator Reid.