Can Obama Survive a Supreme Court Defeat?
The ultimate irony of 2012 would be for Mitt Romney to win by running away from health care reforms he once pioneered while Barack Obama’s presidency bleeds out from injuries sustained while trying to pass them nationally.
A new poll shows two-thirds of Americans hope the Supreme Court will overturn some or all of the 2010 law this month. Only 24 percent want the Court to “keep the entire health care law in place.”
When it rules later this month, the Court may well start an Obamacare avalanche to bury not only the individual mandate but underpinnings of the entire law, as Jeffrey Toobin explains in the New Yorker.
That could well be the final nail in the coffin of Democratic hopes to hold on to the White House and/or at least one chamber of Congress.
Toobin destroys wishful thinking that the President could politically survive and “avoid the problem of defending the law on the campaign trail and concentrate instead on issues on which the Democratic view is more popular.
“This is nonsense. In the first place, in politics and the rest of life, it’s always better to win than lose…Moreover, the invalidation of such a central achievement of his Administration would taint Obama’s Presidency forever…it would look like Obama overreached in the way that the stereotype suggests that liberals often do in expanding the size of government.
“In the event of a loss, Obama would blame the Court, perhaps for good reason, but for better or worse the Justices will have the last word. In the famous words of Justice Robert Jackson, ‘We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.’”
For collectors of ironies, the bottom line in such a November defeat would be that the health-care war was lost not only by the ugly spectacle of both parties in Congress bloating the law into a monstrous mess but a President who let them do it by not taking charge at the start.
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Well, no, he probably wouldn’t survive politically.
Health Care Reform will cease to be a political football when people come to their senses and realize that there is no “freedom” in being pinned to a situation, a certain job or a certain town or any number of dire circumstances involving “pre-existing” clauses or the possibility of being dropped from a “plan,” when they realize that large numbers of personal bankruptcy happens for getting ill, while on such a plan.
If/when these things are rolled back, GOPers might cheer, all the while carrying signs about patriotism and mom and god and family (and the defeat of “social**m,”) but Americans overall will lose.
As a provider I listen to people complain about their health care plan a significant part of my day, we hire someone in the office to deal directly with health plans and their complexities. Never thought I’d see the day when I wish we had the political gonads to consider single payor.
And liberal “expanding the size of government,” the canard that flies in the face of reality, is done most vigorously and without reservation by GOP-lead governments far more often in my lifetime.
JeffP..Agree with everythinn you said. Also a former Finance Executive in a hospital and believe single payor is the only way healthcare reform in this country will work. And to make it work, healthcare workers need to be part of a government program much like the Canadian system to provide needed controls on cost.
But I have said many times, had Pelosi and Reid had the political guts to defend thir system and fund it through the taxing authority and not try to use the commerce clause, this would be a done deal and would take legislative action to overcome.
Lack of leadership by Obama, Pelosi and Reid to defend their legislation and defend a “tax” in the bill led to this disaster that may be coming.
I really wish that the GOP, who have the balls and drive to get what they want, were not basically trying to undo everything that was started in the 1930′s and 40′s that made this country the superpower it has become. I wish the Democrats, who at least seem to be more in touch with the 99%, had any balls or convictions whatsoever to get anything done. I’m still more or less in Obama’s corner, especially after the GOP primary and getting to see what they consider presidential material. However, I have never like Harry Reid and Pelosi is pretty ineffectual as far as I can see. Anything that the dems do get done happens in spite of them not because of them.
I don’t agree a negative Supreme Court decision will be the final nail in the coffin. It’s a long way to the election and Romney is a gaffe-prone boring candidate.
Other than that I agree with most of Mr Stein’s article and the comments. Obama showed poor leadership on the ACA essentially dumping the whole thing on Pelosi and Reid, and likely would have signed whatever bill they gave him. His administration has argued both that the mandate is not and is a tax depending on the circumstances. Congress could easily have configured the mandate as a tax and spared us all the Supreme Court battle, but were hamstrung by Obama’s campaign promises not to raise taxes.
Beyond that the bill itself does little to control costs. It uses accounting tricks to make it balance and tries to give the appearance of getting something for nothing. They even forgot to put in a severability clause. Obama may have had noble intentions but as is often the case that does not translate to effective leadership and results.
Yup, to all the above.