If the Wall Street Journal has it right, the Grahamanuel deal to swap a Khalid Shaikh Mohammed military commission for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility is inching forward in the Senate. Well, sort of. The paper claims that anonymous Democratic Senate aides “say Mr. Graham believes two other Republicans are willing to join the compromise.” Still, presume that it’s true.

OK then. I usually leave the whip-counting to my friend David Dayen, who does it better than I possibly could. But a couple things. First, who’s really going to vote against the Afghanistan war funding request, which is the legislative vehicle for the money for shutting down the GTMO detention facility — thereby calling into question whether the White House needs Graham to close GTMO in the first place. I know, I know, that’s being tragically literal: the White House just wants to work with Graham on a variety of stuff, from climate change to immigration reform to all manner of other things that no Republicans will vote for. This is the choice.

But that brings the second point. Say the opposition to closing Guantanamo — will John McCain prove to be against it after he’s been for it? — results in either a) the Thomson-purchase funding gets stripped from the Afghanistan request or b) somehow manages to provoke a credible filibuster threat to the Afghanistan funding request. How many progressive Democrats are going to back a bill that paves the way for a military commission for KSM in exchange for entrenching all the bad stuff (except for torture) making GTMO problematic in a new zip code? If Graham is really dedicated to getting the White House on a path to seek a coalition for a filibuster-proof majority — well, then, we’re in the legislative position that we’ve been in on health care or the jobs bill or whatever else, where everyone’s vote takes on outsized importance. So, if, say, progressives like Russ Feingold or Al Franken or whomever — Arlen Specter if Sestak keeps pressing him, perhaps — say they’re not going to vote for such a crummy deal, who knows what could happen. Just saying.