Well, They Managed To Kill It (Updated)

Starts to look like it, anyway.  From Kerry Eleveld at The Advocate a solid analysis:

So how did we get where we are? The White House and Gates seemingly didn’t want a vote this year. Activists wouldn’t let up. Murphy, Levin, and Lieberman put in a heroic effort to salvage repeal. And in my estimation, when Levin was one vote away in the Senate committee, White House officials realized the repeal train was leaving without them and not hopping aboard was a no-win situation. If it passed, they would get no credit; if it failed by one vote, activists would castigate them for withholding support.

This compromise could still fail, and make no mistake, the deal was brokered by the White House, which then treated it as the redheaded stepchild it never wanted in the first place. But the outcome — win or lose — now has the administration's fingerprints on it, even though its refrain since Monday morning has been that Congress was forcing its hand.

Sadly, the best-case scenario — passage — will do nothing to stop the discharges in the near term. It is a critical step that removes the first roadblock to changing the policy at some indefinite point in the future. Passing the measure would not immediately repeal the law — instead the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy will continue until the DOD study is completed and Gates, Mullen, and Obama certify that repeal can proceed.

No matter what happens during the votes Thursday and Friday, the White House will deserve credit only after the law is repealed and replaced with a nondiscrimination policy. And if Congress votes to cede authority over the policy to the administration, President Obama will be uniquely empowered to issue an executive order that guarantees all Americans the opportunity to serve their country with integrity and honor.

1)  Like hell he's going to issue an executive order.

2)  Executive orders can be repealed by later executives.

And as far as I'm concerned, no matter what happens during the votes, the White House deserves no credit at all.

I've written my congressional delegation that the "compromise" (read "sellout") is unacceptable and should be ignored in favor of full repeal, including a non-discrimination policy and a firm timeline for implementation.

Gods, am I pissed!

Update:

Watch Chris Matthews nail Joe Solmonese to the wall on this:

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And here's a post from Autumn Sandeen that brings in the real feeling in the gay community.

Update II:

John McCain remains incoherent.  As quoted by Joe Jervis:

"This 'Don't ask, don't tell' issue, they're going to try to jam that through without even trying to figure out what the impact on battle effectiveness would be," McCain said on Arizona's KBLU radio. "We have to be careful to make any changes to it, because we're in two wars," McCain said. The Arizona Republican, who's fending off a conservative primary challenger in his reelection bid, also asserted that the push forward with this deal is driven by fears that Democrats might lose the votes to repeal the policy in this fall's elections. "One of the reasons they're trying to jam it through is that they think that after the November elections, they may not have the votes," he said.

There seems no longer to be any point of contact between reality and John McCain. 

Update III:

And an excellent post by Autumn Sandeen that hits most of the points that I think need to be hit:

Now, we are asked to wait a little longer for sexual orientation discrimination within our nation's military to end -- and we're only given a process for it to end, and not a guarantee that it will actually end. In the meantime, lesbian gay, and bisexual servicemembers are still to be discharged because of sexual orientation. We in the LGBT community are apparently expected to be satiated with compromises that don't fulfill the promise of our President regarding Don't Ask, Don't Tell -- the President promised he would be our "fierce advocate."

There are laudatory editorials in both NYT and WaPo (although WaPo does note that the "compromise" is "not optimum") that miss the point:  Congress and the Administration have become so dysfunctional that all they can offer is process.