June 27th, 2012
Over at The Daily I make the following argument:
When Democrats lose, however, they tend to place the blame a little higher. The Supreme Court is rigged. The election was stolen by Diebold voting machines. After John Kerry lost in 2004, Democrats snickered about an electoral map showing the “real America” being composed of the West Coast and Northeast. The rest of the map — the red states Bush carried — was dubbed “Jesusland.” The inference being that the real problem was with the American people.
All of which is why, facing the prospect of losing the Obamacare case, the left’s first instinct hasn’t been to blame a bad law. Or bad lawyering. Or even just bad luck. No, to the liberal mind there are no bad outcomes; only broken systems.
A future New York Times rising star provides another data point.
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Tomorrow is going to be the most fun day since the day after Bush beat Kerry. Seriously, I cannot wait for everyone at work to simultaneously cry out in pain and anger. We’ve spent millions in our institute alone (billions across HHS and the rest of the gov) ramping up for Obamacare. Meanwhile, I’ve spent 2 years telling everyone it is a total waste and this thing would get overturned. I was roundly mocked and laughed at as some stupid IT guy who knows nothing about government or constitutional law. Seriously, I’m gonna have so much fun.
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Bouie, the “rising star”, concludes:
“A Court that acts as another arm of the Republican Party is one that doesn’t deserve the standing it claims or the respect it demands. Partisan institutions should be treated as such, and liberals should do as much as possible to challenge the legitimacy of the Court.”So a law that’s ramrodded through Congress on a strictly partisan basis is legitimate. A SCOTUS deliberation that (possibly) results in its being overturned is illegitimate.
Griswold imagines privacy. Roe imagines trimesters. Bollinger imagines unequal protection. But this delegitimizes the Court. No wonder “crying man” in Wisconsin believes that his state’s failure to recall the governor proves that “democracy is dead.”
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SkinsFanPG
That must have been a fun day at the office.
The result shocked just about everyone. I’ve long thought the law was constitutional, I frankly thought the vote would be 6-3 with Kennedy joining in. Whether or not it is constitutional does not address the bigger question of whether it is good policy. On that front, I actually adopt a attitude that is pro-business, but in a back door sort of way. The law creates a level playing field for employers across the nation – rather than disadvantaging businesses in certain states. Yep, I know all the counter-arguments, but to me a level playing field trumps the need to have 50 different models – especially for businesses that are doing business in more than one state.
I’m a business lawyer and deal with companies trying to make sense of the difference in states’ laws all of the time. It keeps me busy – but it’s not productive! The more uniformity that businesses can rely on in planning expansions to other areas, the better it is for the whole nation and the economy. I know I’m in a real minority here – and this position really annoys both the left and the right. But from where I’m sitting, it just makes sense.
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Scott: I’ve been a freelancer since I got out of school but must have missed the day in civics class explaining how the interests of your clients from the globalized paper-pushing arbitrage set trumped a citizen’s rights, mine specifically.
Klug June 27, 2012 at 2:54 pm
The best indication of this trend is James Fallows’ (now-retracted) claim that the Supreme Court is involved in a “slow motion coup.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/06/5-signs-of-a-radical-change-in-us-politics/258904/