I've said it before, I'll say it again, don't confuse the 1996 DOMA vote in Congress, and the subsequent adoption of state DOMA's with what's going to happen in 2004. I'm sure that a lot of otherwise "no" votes were converted to "yes" votes based on the idea that the "yes" vote was symbolic, anyway. The DOMA was a sop to conservatives (the aforementioned Clinton surely used it as a device to get re-elected) during an election year, which everyone knew would have Constitutional problems eventually.
It was a safe vote for a moderate legislator, you could go to the conservatives and say you stood up for marriage, and you could go to the libs and say that it was meaningless, since the SCOTUS would rule that the Constitution trumped it. The fact that there is a Federal Marriage Amendment on the political table means that everyone knows the weaknesses of the DOMA. Do you really believe that people in 1996 were too shortsighted to see the debate we would be having just seven or eight years later? Some were counting on it! The moderates that would have voted against DOMA were buying time for homosexuality to become more accepted in American society, and the Lawrence vs. Texas SCOTUS decision is probably a sign that there was enough of a delay.
Opinion polls have shown that anti-gay sentiment is now lower than pro-gay tolerance. Of course, this is simply in the numbers of people who hold the opinions, right now, I'm more than willing to concede that the people who are against gay rights are far more motivated that the people who are gay-tolerant. But look for a FMA battle to raise the ire of the other side. The fight, then, is for the folks in the middle. Right now, the pro-gay side has the media on its side (they need something to sell papers, even they can see the coming debacle where Bush is going to blast Dean), and all I see conservatives raising is religion, tradition, and perversion. They'll have to come up with concrete ways that existing and potential heterosexual marriages will be adversely affected by the recognition of gay relationships, and I just don't see anything convincing on the horizon.
As Ann Coulter said in her column yesterday (you can link to it from Drudge) everyone knows the weakness of the U.S. Constitution. Judges don't care about it - why would they care about an ammendment to it.
Shalom.