Obama is much more aware of, or perhaps just more comfortable with, the trends on social issues than the anti-gay lobby, and contra Ryan’s comment above, the “majority” opposing same-sex marriage has become unstable while it diminishes. Looking back over attitudes on this issue over the past five or six years, the shift is dramatic. (If you don’t want to trust the polls, look at election results: from 70% to 51 or 52% against is not a positive trend for those opposing gay civil rights, and those results came after scare campaigns that relied on reaching the lizard brain rather than appeals to reason.)

He’s also, I think, reading the courts accurately. Pro-gay decisions are stacking up, and that’s going to affect things down the line. Strategically, this move is very strong — he’s placated the left and handed the right an issue it can’t win on. And if it rattles the assault on the middle class and the poor underway in the Congress, so much the better — no one said he had to do anything for only one reason.

And one other thing just occurred to me: going into 2012, with, as seems likely now, DADT having been formally repealed and the world not having ended, this move will help to defang at least part of the right’s social agenda.

Yes, I do indeed think “calculated” is the right word.

By bringing it now, he throws the Republicans into a hissy and rattles the base. He could have waited until after Congress dealt with the Budget, but given how the republicans are behaving in both houses, I can see how the DOJ decided not to wait until after March 4 to announce their findings and make their determinations.

While there is a deadline, it is not like the deadline was the end of next week; so i am sure there is a certain amount of political calculation in the timing.

While I tend to view the President’s actions through the lens of suspicion, in this case I think the timing is the result of real deadlines rather than political machinations. The DOJ is to have to have presented briefs arguing for rational basis and constitutionality next month.

Yes, he could have waited until the final day before announcing that he would not file such briefs, but then Republicans would have had a legitimate case that he was derelict in his duty.

As a strong supporter of same-sex marriage, I found the timing of Obama’s decision very convenient — not for advancing same-sex marriage, but for throwing Republicans off-message. I do still see that as cynical, even if you don’t.