Ain't no way the Storm's going to pass on the invitation.

I realize they won't. They should, however.

And if they won't... then maybe one of the owners can take Margaret Witt to the White House as her date, so she can talk to the president herself.

Nice idea, but I doubt a Storm protest would be headline news outside of Seattle.

We SHOULD be holding his feet to the fire. For everyone who says he's biding his time until the next term, or that democrats should be glad for what they have and show some patience, I'm glad there are people out there who aren't content to just sit back and wait.
This email went out to everyone on GetEqual's mailing list, check out their website and get on their mailing list if you haven't had a chance:
"In his State of the Union address, President Obama promised to work with Congress to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell this year. Congress failed to move forward with DADT repeal on September 21, delaying basic civil rights, but President Obama can take bold action to stand by his word. Join me in urging President Obama to stop discharging lesbian and gay servicemembers immediately, and sign up to take action if and when President Obama comes to your town."

Um... I'm thinking it would be huge news.

I'm torn: we should hold his feet to the fire but on the other hand the left does come across like petulant whiny children somehow.

@3, you have a point. The President wouldn't mind either way, how things are going. He's not a terrible person, he's made/making bad decisions and needs to be shaken.

To really make it a story, I'd suggest they do an Eartha Kitt instead - show up, be awesome, smile nicely, with a glint in their eye. Once the cameras roll, have words with him.

If any interested players could talk it out with the team owners beforehand to make sure everyone gets to keep their job afterward, that'd be a fine thing.

The WNBA head office would shit bricks, of course. Aaaah, but this is our historic day! To which the answer would be, well, yes it is.

@6 Why? Because we expect him to do the things we elected him for? How is that whiny? It's not our job to genuflect, it's our job as voters and citizens to demand the best of the people we put into office. He's just a guy doing a job. If your kid's teacher said they'd teach him math, science and english, would you hold off on complaining that they only covered two out of three, for fear of being thought "whiny"?

This just reminds me how, largely powerless though she might be, my president is still awesome. Despite being what the media her refer to as a 'conservative Catholic', she's still always been actively pro-gay rights, and continues to be so:

http://www.pantibar.com/blog.aspx?conten…

What Senator do you think he should have called? All the Dems voted to repeal DADT. Calling a Republican Senator would have been completely ineffective (maybe counterproductive). He has no chits to cash with Snowe. You seem to be running on a Green Lantern theory of domestic politics---if he just wants it enough, it would happen, and if it doesn't, it's 'cause he doesn't want it enough. But that ignores the actual voting that actually happened.

I understand holding feet to the fire, lobbying, protesting, blah blah blah. But your ideas of what Obama should do---and your general attitude of jilted bitterness towards Obama---are silly. It's not the whininess I complain about---you're right to hold his feet to the fire on this---it's the assumption that he has magic powers that could change the makeup of Congress.

@9, that's lovely!

Ya know the WNBA is pretty "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" - maybe some action would get two bans (one written, one unspoken) repealed...

#8: Here's why it sounds whiny to me.

I get the sense we are on the precipice of the US becoming a Third World country and entirely losing our middle class. We are at a crazy turning point, today's GOP vision is a total joke and not economically sustainable and a recipe to turn the US to Mexico.......yet people are screaming "Need More AIDS funding!"

Maybe whiny isn't the word....but "stuck in 1992?". I feel the stakes are higher and the game has changed, but so many liberals are still fighting their pet projects from college?

I don't know, I say this as a ultra-lefty but the criticism of Obama like this does somehow seem out of touch to me.

@14 Huh. Somehow, I never thought of human rights (as in: rights for everyone, not just straight people) or AIDS funding as a "pet project" from college. My "pet project" from college? "Colby for the Freeze," back when we were still worried about nuclear proliferation, but that was so "80s". Jeez. If we can manage this stuff in Canada without turning into Mexico, as you say, you guys should be able to do it, too. I'm not convinced toeing the middle road is the way to success.

@10 You are completely wrong. 2 Senators voted against cloture. Harry Reid also did so as a procedural move which allows for a possible re-vote. Jim Webb (D-VA) voted for cloture but has actively campaigned against repeal. Olympia Snow (R-ME) voted against cloture for reasons related to Senate protocol but has publicly stated support for repeal of DADT. Get your facts together. There's nothing more dangerous in a participatory democracy than the half-informed voter.

@10 -- No, the entire Democratic Senate contingent did not vote for repeal, nor did all the independents who are supposed to be voting with the Democrats on major issues. And it's not a question of simply gathering all the Democrats together and forcing them into lockstep. There are ways to twist Republican arms as well, and no one in Obama's administration has done that -- not a bit. Party lines didn't stop earlier Democratic Presidents from getting the votes they wanted because they were (a) committed to getting their legislation passed and (b) not afraid that someone might dislike them.

Obama's announcement at the beginning of his term that he was going to work on bipartisan cooperation was tantamount to handing his entire agenda to the Republicans and asking them to unite and gang up on him. When you're the acknowledged leader of a herd of cats, you don't tell the pack of dogs at your flank what you're up to.

I think you should all consider what's happening right now with the debates about the tax cuts, where the president has clearly come out strongly for the right things, pushed congress to vote, he's picked up that phone, given speeches, etc.

From Talking Points Memo today, it looks like the Democrats are considering scrapping the vote on the tax cuts because: "We have a winning message now, why muddy it up with a failed vote, because, of course, Republicans are going to block everything"

I hate that their running from these fights, but what are we supposed to do about it? We could do what Dan and Americanblog are proposing, stamp our feet, piss and moan, pull our support and money from the Democrats, and sit back while the clear Neanderthals take control of government.

Or we can continue to try to elect more and better Democrats.

And don't say Obama hasn't done anything in this fight, he's done more than any president in my lifetime.

On-point as always, Canuck.

@10: All of them. Especially the 2 non-R who voted against moving forward on the defense bill and the 1 who abstained (56-43 to move forward, only 41 R Senators). Tell them to stop fucking around with unrelated riders (DREAM Act in defense bill?). Suspend enforcement; call it a "stop-loss" measure for our ongoing wars.

The AIDS-funding thing is a bit odd to me: it's oddly-specific to something for which we now have treatments that allow people to die from other things and isn't so much a "gay" issue as a general sexual health issue (the association with the gay male population is based on historical data that indicate a statistically-higher prevalence of HIV in gay male populations, but this gap is continually closing, and the continued association is a factor in vilification of gay populations as sexually-dangerous). I'd love to see cures for every STI out there (including HIV) as well as fail-safe chemical male birth control (both in case of condom failure), but it's a bit unrealistic for me to expect Obama to prioritize funding research into these things in the middle of the largest budget shortfall ever. I think the most effective strategy for combating the spread of HIV is comprehensive, inclusive (NOT heteronormative), information-based (not fear/ideology-based) MANDATORY sex education (if I can't cite a religious objection to mathematics, the English language, or physical fitness, why is it acceptable for sexuality knowledge?) that will empower people to make informed, risk-aware decisions.

The DADT thing is a different matter, as it's really simple and costs nothing.

@14: "pet projects from college"? You mean those socially-liberal ideals on which a lot of people give up when they get older and become jaded and disenchanted with the system, pushing voter participation to well under 50%? It's a bad thing when we don't give up on those, roll over, and let fucking crazy (witchcraft, young-Earth, Obama from Kenya, global-warming-denial, etc.) totalitarian (pro-expansion-of-police-state-infrastructure, anti-civil-liberty, anti-civil-rights) serf-state (pro-corporate-welfare, pro-concentration-of-wealth, anti-worker) Christian (self-proclaimed) theocrats (they explicitly want civil law to be Christian Biblical law) control the discourse? The problem isn't the people who haven't capitulated to centrism, it's the centrists who think it's possible to compromise with reality-denying ideologues (be they Christian, pro-deregulation/privatization, pro-globalization, etc.). It's not possible: get your heads out of the sand.

@17: Er, okay, so you're right, there's Webb, who wavered, but eventually voted the right way. And then? Snowe, who as you say has publicly campaigned for repeal but then voted the wrong way? Your examples aren't really supporting you very well.

As for @18: Ways to twist Republican arms? What do you think those are? It took months of courting for Obama to get a single GOP vote on ACA, and after the primary firestorm that resulted, no Republican is going to vote with Obama on this or anything else. Beyond that, you're just babbling about "commitment", which is to say, you're back to the Green Lantern Theory.

Obama keeping out of this was the best thing he could've done for its passage. The GOP has basically decided to make Obama a boogeyman (implications of racism, yes, intended) this season. But there's a fair amount of public support for repealing DADT, even from conservatives. The hope was that as long as Obama kept out of it, that support might lead to a good vote. But if Obama made it an Obama issue, Republicans would be falling over themselves to denounce it, and public support would dry up lighting-fast.

As far as I can tell, y'all want Obama to "show commitment" or "twist arms" or other silly fantasies of the all-powerful president. This is what kills liberals every time---thinking the right president can do it all, when what you really need is control of more seats in Congress. But hey, 2010 is the time to teach a lesson, so let's lose more seats in Congress. Then the President will really have to work for us, through the magical devices that you imagine he has.

I'm disappointed in Obama in a hundred different ways, but I do admire they way he frequently puts himself in situations where he has to deal with his detractors.

This is such b.s. Dan - DADT is primarily a lesbian issue, and you're co-opting it using your white male privilege to make it seem like gay white men are so hard done by.

Congress voted on DADT for you. 57 Democratic Senators voted for it. They tacked it into legislation that has to pass. No Republican wanted to give Obama a legislative victory; do you honestly think making a couple of phone calls would have changed the situation?

Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins sat on their hands while their own state banned gay marriage. Of course that's Obama's fault?

@John Horstman -

No Democrat abstained from the vote. Harry Reid switched his vote so that he could re-introduce the bill at a later date. 57 Democrats voted for the bill. You know who didn't? The two senators from Arkansas, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor.

Pryor's on record as not believing in evolution, but you think the president can convince him to vote to repeal DADT? Lincoln has generally refused to vote with the team, and now she's going to lose her seat - she's been playing this faux-democrat game her entire time in office.

I am surprised that no Obamacon has remined us that "his plate is full". Bullshi.

I officially resigned from the DNC yesterday after being a loyal member for 32 years. I could give a rats ass anymore. Hell I don't care if Palin gets elected now. maybe it will be best if the whole damn country goes down the sewer with her. Maybe then some folks may actually wake up.

I have been slighted, insulted and betrayed by Obama and the DNC just one too many times. The epic fail of Obama and the deems on DADT pussed me over the edge.

I do realize that they don't give a shit but perhaps they will in 2012? Regardless too late for me. I promise right here and now to never vote for a democrat ever again.