In an earlier post, Joe quoted a participant at last night's LGBT private fundraiser dinner for the President talking about how dumb it was for "some people" to have been advocating for the President to issue a stop-loss order on DADT. Well, guess who some of those people were - HRC:
December 9, 2010There's an obvious desire by some of the President's stalwart defenders to rewrite history and pretend like the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was a forgone conclusion. A cake walk, as it were. And that's anything but the truth. Just because DADT got repealed doesn't mean that it would have been repealed anyway, had "some people" not been advocating from the sidelines for the President to be a fiercer advocate. It's easy to say "oh look, it happened, so all those people who were worried were just being silly." Perhaps those people had a reason to be concerned, and perhaps they're the ones who were pivotal in making it all happen.
Dear xxxx,
The Senate has failed to lead.
President Obama still can.
Ask President Obama to stop defending this unconstitutional law in court and to halt "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" discharges.
The United States Senate has failed our military and failed the American people.
Despite hundreds of thousands of calls and emails demanding an end to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" – and despite military leaders imploring the Senate to repeal the law this year instead of leaving it to the courts – the Senate today voted to leave prejudice and bigotry on the books.
Since it appears Congress won't repeal the law this year, the fate of lesbian and gay service members now rests in President Obama's hands. To make good on his commitment to end "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in 2010, President Obama needs to immediately issue a stop-loss order halting military discharges. At the same time, the Administration must immediately cease defending DADT in federal court.
Tell President Obama right now: End the discharges under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and stop defending this unconstitutional law in court.
In his State of the Union address last January, President Obama said he would work with Congress to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" this year. But despite the House successfully voting to repeal the law, the Senate continued its filibuster.
Now it's up to President Obama to clean up Congress's mess. And the first step is for his administration to stop defending the law in court and embroiling "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in seemingly endless legal wrangling.
Also, as Commander in Chief, the President can issue an executive order to retain any soldier deemed necessary in a time of war – even though Congress has failed to remove the law from the books. President Obama must issue that order and end the discharges now.
Send your email to President Obama and remind him that millions of Americans will stand with him when he asserts his leadership on this issue. And taking action today will add crucial pressure for President Obama to act before 2010 ends in just a few weeks.
We need President Obama to take immediate action to end this law that has hurt our families, our soldiers, and our national security by costing us thousands of the best and brightest service members who should be defending our nation.
Urge President Obama to act immediately: Stop the military discharges, stop the legal defenses.
I'm not giving up,
Joe Solmonese
President
Look, I'm one who actually now gives the President props for repealing DADT. Don't get me wrong, it was a mess, and I would argue a somewhat unnecessary mess. I wasn't thrilled with how he handled the repeal process. I think it mimicked the way Health Care Reform was mis-handled in many ways. But in the end, after a lot of extra work from some of the gay groups, from Get Equal and Dan Choi, from the Netroots, among others, it got done. But it's also true that if we didn't have a President who wanted to do this, it wouldn't have gone anywhere in the first place. Both arguments are true. So let's not discount either.
