Some say that the Supreme Court sometimes considers public opinion on issues they . If that’s the case with the Obama adminstration’s health care law, then it should be extremely worried about what’s to come:
More than two-thirds of Americans hope the Supreme Court will overturn some or all of
the 2010 health care law, according to a new poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS News. Just 24 percent said they hoped the court “would keep the entire health care law in place.”
The Supreme Court is expected to decide a challenge to the law by the end of this month.
Forty-one percent of those surveyed said the court should strike down the entire law, and another 27 percent said the justices should overturn only the individual mandate, which requires most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty.
These numbers have not changed much in recent months and appeared to be largely unaffected by the more than six hours of arguments in the Supreme Court in March.
There was greater Republican opposition to the law than Democratic support. About two-thirds of Republicans in the recent survey said the entire law should be overturned, while 43 percent of Democrats said all of the law should be upheld.
More than 70 percent of independent voters said they wanted to see some or all of the law struck down, with a majority saying they hoped to see the whole law overturned. Twenty-two percent of independents said they hoped the entire law would survive.
Responses varied by education, too. Nearly a third of respondents with a college education said they would like to see the law upheld, compared with about 20 percent of those without a college degree.
Legal scholars and political scientists are divided over whether the justices take account of public opinion in making their decisions.
And call it fate…destiny…coincidence, whatever but:
The Supreme Court ruling will come this month. And the summers have traditionally been brutal for Obama and the Democrats — and June could be brutal, indeed:
Just one week old, June already is proving a cruel month for President Barack Obama and the Democrats — and it could get a lot worse.
The political blows from Tuesday’s bitter loss in Wisconsin’s gubernatorial recall and from last week’s abysmal unemployment numbers, bad as they were, could multiply before the month is out.
The Supreme Court will pass judgment shortly on the president’s signature legislative achievement — the 2010 law overhauling the nation’s health care system — and also will decide on his administration’s challenge to Arizona’s tough immigration law. If Chief Justice John Roberts and the court strike down all or part of the health care law, it could demoralize Democrats who invested more than a year — and quite a few political careers — to secure the bill’s passage.
And in Arizona, aside from the big immigration case, the Democrats are fighting to hold onto the House seat of Gabrielle Giffords, who resigned in January to focus on recovering from her gunshot wound. In next Tuesday’s special election, former Giffords aide Ron Barber is locked in a close race with Republican Jesse Kelly, who lost to her in 2010 by just 4,156 votes.
Facing an election-year summer fraught with political peril, the Democrats are struggling to revive supporters’ spirits and counteract developments that could energize Republicans and solidify public opinion that the country is on the wrong track and in need of new leadership.
In a video pep talk to supporters this week, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina acknowledged the challenge. “We need to stay focused, work hard and ignore the ups and downs,” he said.
A defeat on health care would most assuredly qualify as a “down.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.