Yes, there is a pretty wide range of responses that varies depending on your chain of command and the environment that you serve in. Some people are fortunate enough to have leadership that values performance over bigotry. But as it stands right now, the bigots, particularly those in the officer corps, have the freedom to indulge their prejudices at will. And the President and his administration apparently have no problems with that.

Wow.

I hope that the Administration’s plans don’t involve waiting until 2011 or 2013. The Republicans are undoubtedly going to pick up seats, as the minority party usually does in a midterm election. It will be much harder to get gay rights bills passed if Congress waits until the next session.

If DADT is still on the books in 2012, Obama will not receive my vote, no matter what else he accomplishes as President.

Having said that, I believe his advisors (I’m thinking Rahm, primarily) are convinced that gay issues are purely bad news for Dems, and want to slow-walk anything gay as much as possible, and under no circumstances should Obama spend any political capital on DADT repeal, ENDA, UAFA, or DOMA modification. It will take persuasion to get 218 votes in the House and 60 in the Senate for any of these, given that every Red Dog (or Senate equivalent) is absolutely terrified of the fag-bashing ads his or her opponent could run, and given that there will be no Rep votes for any of these in the Senate, and probably not more than a handful in the House.

Now I believe the Dems will lose a couple of seats in the Senate next year, and a few in the House (but not enough to lose their majority), so conditions right now probably are as favorable as they will be for a while (remember the Dems will be defending their big Senate gains from ’06 and ’08 in ’12 and ’14). On that basis I believe we have to push right now, and yeah we need some mules to keep things going. Doesn’t mean I’m anti-Obama (especially given the alternative).

Now taking the long view, I recognize it took ten years to get from Brown v Board to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and thirteen years to get to Loving v Virginia. If I can equate the decision in Lawrence v Texas as being my community’s Brown, then in terms of that timeline we’re only up to about 1960. Remember, though, that all during that time blacks were working to push things forward.

The original Civil Rights movement is the exception. It seemed to combine grandiose goals and incremental means in the same group of people. But most other movements (e.g., labor, feminism, antiwar) relied on a division of labor, with different personalities contributing different things at different times.

Not really, unless there is public pressure for that public option. Obama has certainly shown no signs of giving a rat’s *ss about it – although this may be due to the fact that he’s handled healthcare reform pretty f*cking badly.

“*Footnote This is not to say that Clinton could have succeeded using Obama’s tactics; public and military attitudes have shifted radically in the meantime, and it’s possible that success in 1993 was simply not in the cards. I have been told that Sam Nunn turned down Clinton’s offer of Defense because it came packaged with the requirement that Nunn back gays in the military.”

Which pretty much invalidates your argument; as an analogy, integrating the US Armed Forces would have required much less Trumanesque buck-stops-hereness in, say, the 1970′s.

I’ve been reading Sullivan and I’ve never gotten the impression that he is “attacking the character of the President”. Can you provide an example?

BTW: about an hour before your post, Sullivan acknowledges this development. He’s optimistic, but not as certain as you seem to be that there is an organized strategy behind it.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/10/laying-the-dynamite-around-dadt.html#more