Obamaworries
The normally supportive commentariat is not happy, for a variety of reasons:
- My law school classmate Ruth Marcus, WaPo, Obama’s unsettling attack on the Supreme Court: “I would lament a ruling striking down the individual mandate, but I would not denounce it as conservative justices run amok. Listening to the arguments and reading the transcript, the justices struck me as a group wrestling with a legitimate, even difficult, constitutional question. For the president to imply that the only explanation for a constitutional conclusion contrary to his own would be out-of-control conservative justices does the court a disservice.”
- Jeffrey Toobin, via TPM: “In my experience when the argument goes badly for one side, that side generally loses,” Toobin said. “That’s not obviously a 100 percent guarantee [but] my view of oral argument is based on watching oral arguments change at the Supreme Court over the years.”
- Nan Aron: ““I do think the statements by some of the senators and the president are serving notice to the court that, frankly, if the court does overturn the law, in essence, the court will become a political football in the election,” Aron said.
- Nate Silver: “However, the argument that the bill being struck down would actually help Mr. Obama seems to have little grounding in the evidence — nor, frankly, in common sense. Among the voters that are most critical to Mr. Obama’s re-election prospects, the Supreme Court is more popular than the health care bill. If the justices declare one of the president’s signature accomplishments to be unconstitutional, it would not be a boon to him.”
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