Apparently, the chances that the repeal of DADT will even be attempted during the lame-duck session are next to nil. "Disappointing" doesn't begin to do it—it's as pathetic and as total a failure as can be, considering the president has flatly stated he wanted it repealed, it's been voted on already and was filibustered by one vote, is (for now) attached to a defense-spending bill that can't not be passed eventually, was the subject of a request by the president that the Log Cabin Republicans round up "four or five" Republican senators to come on board and is an incredibly popular measure among the public.

Every critic who's been howling for a year that this would happen was absolutely right.

Worse, it would be hard to characterize Obama's work on this as a good-faith but losing effort.

And still worse, now that legislative repeal is being called D.O.A., those in favor of repealing it can only look to the courts—where Obama is fighting against them while saying he's for them, and where even a victory there for the good guys would also lead to egg on the face of the Democratic standard-bearer.

And while we've all been hyperventilating about DADT, something much more important—ENDA—never even got this far. I don't see how Obama can do anything at all for gay rights for the rest of his presidency unless he does an about-face on being unwilling to let DADT die in court or an about-face on whether or not he has the power to kill it by executive fiat and/or suddenly "evolves" on marriage equality (and the latter would be an amazing and inspiring thing—the first president to support marriage equality!—but would not necessarily translate into any movement on the issue due to the lack of support from Congress and the Senate).

One could argue that DADT affects relatively few people, etc., etc., but the principle is undeniably universal among the gay community and among all freedom-loving, fair-minded Americans. And Obama's completely disastrous handling of this could be seen as an example of his larger failure to lead boldly.

We've spent two years defending him against insane attacks on his citizenship and his "Socialism" and other racist garbage; instead, Obama should have been defending himself by aggressively making those attacks looks foolish so that he and we would have had more time to focus on things that matter while at the same time defusing the very real, very toxic, contagious irrational hatred that was growing like a cancer in his presidency.

So if the first two years are a learning process...what has he learned? We'll soon see. As I wrote before, there is a very real comparison between where Obama is now and where Reagan and especially Clinton were at similar points. But I also wrote that there was little evidence that Obama has the pitbull qualities of either of those men—and here I never thought Karl Rove would agree with me on anything!

Voting Republican because of the president's failure on this (and other) gay issue is not smart. But holding him personally accountable is smart and just. If he can't get it together on this, what will he get it together on going forward? Yes, thank you for health insurance reform and the many other good things you did, but now what?