Maybe, but it's the way people on both sides think these days. Get them riled up over something this polarizing and they start doing things about it. I the the Tea Party is a fair example. People who often don't vote rose up and made their voices heard. I dunno, maybe I'm all wet on this, but I think this will have some sort of a boomerang effect in the election. I'm not saying it will cost Obama the election, but I think this whole Obamacare thing will have a positive vote effect for the right.
I think it will, too, but not over and above what it's already done to Obama's approval ratings. I don't think this Supreme Court decision hurts Obama...I think passing the bill in the first place hurt him. There's a reason analysts talked incessantly about him spending political capital back then...there was going to be a clear cost for trying to institute something that's never been successfully passed in this country before (on a national level). I think the ACA will be plenty popular once it's actually up and running for a few years, but I definitely expected it to hurt Obama til then.
This is why I don't like radio & TV media personalities. They're all just plain stupid. It's an act. Their entertainers.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...ason_the_chief_justice_upheld_obamacare_.html Chess, not checkers. Not that I personally understand it, but die-hard liberal friends in WA gov't went from "YESSSS! In your FACE, Republicans!" to "Oh, shit." in about 2 hours yesterday.
I've read some conservatives espouse this line of thinking (not that Slate is conservative, that isn't my point), that it was a master stroke in "changing" Congress' ability to use the commerce clause and others decrying Roberts for setting precedent increasing how Congress can use taxes (taxing people for not doing something). I can't claim to know enough about law to comment on whether Roberts materially changed the system (and how, if so), but it is interesting to me how wide the split is on what Roberts did.
Roberts had to balance his role as a justice and his role as chief justice. He wants to maintain the perceived credibility of the court and he needed to compromise, perhaps, how he otherwise would have ruled. Krauthammer makes this point pretty well, I think, bringing up both Roe v Wade and Bush v Gore in his analysis. http://news.investors.com/article/6...ducks-another-bush-gore-with-court-ruling.htm In terms of whether it hurts Obama as a candidate: I think it does. There was a reason that he and other Democrats were swearing up and down that the mandate was not a tax: people don't like taxes. Assuming they were making that assertion with some political reasoning, it's possible that the people who they were able to reach before with that message will feel betrayed and not support him or be more energetic in their opposition. I think it's more clear that whichever side lost was going to be energized: Democrats should feel good that the law was upheld but it will almost certainly result in fewer liberal voters coming to the polls in November than if the SCOTUS had outrageously thwarted the will of the people. The GOP, on the other hand, would have had some of the wind taken out of their outraged sails by having the SCOTUS agree with their assertions, and I would anticipate there will be more angry conservatives voting in the upcoming elections than there otherwise would have been. For Obama the POTUS and for his legacy, it was a good ruling. If he can retain the White House then Obamacare will have more time to be rolled out and will be more difficult to repeal. If Obamacare doesn't end up working, he might have ended up looking better to have it nipped in the bud by the judicial brance, but he will appear less impotent in any event. Ed O.
Maybe that's it. Maybe as someone else wrote, his epilepsy drugs are affecting his mental powers. Or maybe he personally thought the law was good. Or maybe he honestly thought it was constitutional on its merits. Or maybe his children were kidnapped by liberals and held hostage until he voted to uphold. Maybe he's a communist. Maybe he was born in Kenya. I doubt anyone cares that Obama said it wasn't a tax and the supreme court ruled that it technically was (I mean, other than people who oppose it anyway). Who was in favor of Obamacare only because the penalty wasn't called a tax? barfo
Personally, I think the simplest explanation is probably the right one: Roberts was making no comment on whether it was good policy, he simply ruled on whether it was constitutional, as per his job. This idea that he betrayed conservative ideals in upholding this law, as though Supreme Court justices are philosopher-kings who are supposed to rule on the wisdom of laws and he went against conservative wisdom, is beyond bizarre (not aiming this at any specific poster in this thread, but it's a sentiment I've seen expressed plenty over the past day and a half). It was never considered obviously unconstitutional...that's often a term used by people who don't like a law, regardless of the actual legal merits. Let's remember this is a proposal that came out of a conservative think tank and was championed by congressional Republicans in the 1990s. Which makes Newt Gingrich going on FOX News yesterday to say that the "activist judges" on the Supreme Court should be arrested for upholding the constitutionality of a proposal his Republican House put forth amazingly funny.
I think I would've been more interested in voting on the ability to use the "pass this bill, so that we can see what's in it" approval process. [video=youtube;KoE1R-xH5To]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoE1R-xH5To[/video]
I see your point, but I think there are those who rarely vote, but who will make it a point to because of how this went down. And it is a new tax and some people feel very strongly about that. I also think the right will start really bringing out how this is to be paid for (all the various ways) that affect low & middle income people that may just stir up people a bit. Not a lot of people, but maybe enough to make a difference in a key state her and there.
Hard to imagine this being the issue that gets people up off their lazy butts. "Grr, congress passed a healthcare law a couple of years ago and now the supreme court has declared it constitutional! That really chaps my hide!" barfo
Because the word "tax" doesn't play well when you're trying to pass a bill (and it's pretty much a matter of semantics as to whether you call it a tax, or a fee or a penalty). However, that battle was fought (and Republicans did their best to market it as a tax). It seems unlikely that the damage, whatever it was, hasn't already been priced into his polling numbers. The people who care about the hair-splitting difference between a tax and a fee probably already made up their mind on the issue.
I agree that it's semantics, and I agree that none of us know the answer to this for sure, but I find it hard to believe that the SCOTUS decision yesterday was already priced into his polling numbers--no one knew the outcome, and of all the outcomes, this (finding it kosher because of a justification not offered by the supporters of the bill) was not a particularly likely one. It's definitely possible that those who would have cared about it being a tax when it was passed don't care now, and if it were not an election year I don't know how long the irritation felt would have lasted, but given we're a few months away from the election, I think it's pretty likely that some energizing of the GOP base will occur and relatively likely that some anti-tax independents will be swayed against the Dems/Obama because of the ruling. Ed O.
I'm not saying the Supreme Court decision was priced in...I'm saying the unpopularity of the bill already was. I don't think it being stamped constitutional by the court creates a new hostility toward Obama (though it may deepen existing hostilities in some toward Obama, which I'll address further down my post). That isn't quite what I was saying either. What I was saying is that the people who cared about the difference between a tax and a fee probably made up their mind back at the time that the bill was being debated and passed. Nothing about the bill's fundamentals changed yesterday (other than a rather "inside baseball" issue of the Medicaid expansion being opt-out on the state level)...only that the "fee" or "penalty" terminology was replaced by "tax." People who resented the idea of paying money if they didn't carry health insurance presumably already disliked Obama before yesterday...the only people I could see changing their minds are people who were neutral/okay about a fee but not okay about a tax. And those people, I'd argue, already decided for themselves what they considered it. I agree that it's possible that with one avenue to throwing out the ACA now closed (Supreme Court overturning), it may create an enthusiasm surge for people who badly want it repealed to vote for Romney. But while it's possible, a priori analysis of what will cause enthusiasm surges and gaps tends to be pretty unreliable. Every campaign, people talk about how this or that will cause a surge of young people or Hispanics or old people or whoever else to go to the polls for a certain candidate and it seems to be pretty random whether that actually happens.
The selfishness of cons cracks me up. "waah, I don't want to pay for anyone's healthcare... I'm gonna be rich someday" Guess what, ya already are paying for for poor folks to get treatment; the ACA just aims to reduce the bills we pay to make up for those who can't. It's not a perfect system- far from it; that would be single payer healthcare. The ACA is a big giveaway to the private insurers- clearly a socialist program. LOL. I love that some of you think the republicons are going to be able to spin this in their favor... the empty suit y'all are running put this program into place as Governor... and guess what? It's worked great. Willard can't run against a program he invented without being seen as what he is- governor etch-a-sketch.
Auto insurance falls under the 10th Amendment. Unless I'm unaware of a federal mandate/tax for people to carry car insurance? That's a state issue, and even states don't claim it's a tax, nor is there a penalty if you choose not to own a car. Pretzels.
