Act. Of. Congress.

It will take an act of Congress.

I don't get what's so hard to understand about that concept to the kind of people who comment on political blogs.

To repeal DADT he has to ask Congress to do it, get someone to sponsor the bill, push to make sure it gets through the armed services committees and then to a floor vote and push the Blue Dogs to vote for it. He has to put his political capital behind it and push hard because, for a Democrat from a conservative state or district, it will be treated like THE most important vote ever cast in the history of the Republic next election day and their bladder control will be iffy. The Republicans will be screaming their idiot heads off about the imminent Desolation of the Abomination and raising bunches of cash on it. The MSM will be obsessing about it as the most important story of the hour. Anything else he might be doing, like, say, trying to get health care and climate legislation or, yes, even something as pedestrian as trying to keep the financial industry from starting another round of catastrophic speculation, falls by the wayside.

Jesus, people, try to remember back as far as 1993. The reason we have DADT is because Clinton decided repealing the ban on homosexuality in the military would be a quick, easy win and, thus, one of the first things he'd do. The gigantic ratfuck that ensued as a result of that miscalculation was a major contributing factor to the failure of health care reform. DADT was the best outcome he could engineer out of the debacle and, lest we forget, it was progress over what we had before.

Some have criticized Obama for overlearning the lessons of the Clinton years, possibly with some justice. But damn, think about how catastrophic it would be if he repeated him. Think what the media meme would be about him, and about Democrats. "Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result." Ring any bells?

Things have changed. It will be easier this time, but only after he's put some wins on the board on the other big issues he's working now. If he does it before then, there's at least a reasonable case to be made that he's risking losing on everything. If he does it now, and it sounds like he may be about to do so, that's the risk he's taking.