Mr. Obama Predicts

Okay, President Obama said today he thought the Supreme Court would uphold the Affordable Care Act.

He said they would look at the role of the court, and the role of the Congress, and they would say, well the elected representatives of the people voted for this, so who are we to over turn it? If voting means anything, then we cannot dismiss that.

Another reason the Court would not overturn the law, he says, is that would mean reversing things which have already gone into place, like forbidding pre existing conditions as a basis for rejecting issuing policies and allowing kids just out of college to remain in their parent's policies.

And the third reason the President thinks the Supreme Court will uphold the law is precedent: other courts have upheld the law as constitutional.

Mad Dog would love to be wrong on this and would love the President to be correct.

Unfortunately, Mad Dog knows the President is wrong: The Court will reverse the individual mandate and will argue it's not their fault if the rest of the law falls apart. All they are talking about is the mandate. Whatever happens after that is up to Congress.

Why?

Well, the simple answer is the court is nothing special, just a collection of nine political appointees doing what they were appointed to do.

In a review of The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt, William Saletan noted that authors from George Lakoff to Drew Westen have said that "people are fundamentally intuitive, not rational. If you want to persuade others, you have to appeal to their sentiments." David Hume observed reason was the slave of the passions, and you can certainly see that in Justice Scalia. People "reach conclusions quickly and produce reasons later only to justify what they've decided," says Saletan. "Reason justifies our acts and judgments to others."

This blog and others have shown how the justices have done this, case after case.

They will say the Constitution is about what you cannot vote on, so the voting the President insists they respect matters not at all. They will say the function of the court is to be sure the other branches do not violate "Original Intent," i.e. the idea of right governance as conceived by the founding fathers, who in Scalia's mind have the same holy status as the twelve apostles.

They will say the argument we'd have to dismantle what has already been put into place, and that lives will be changed by it could have been used in Brown vs. The Board of Education--after all, had the segregated Southern schools not already been built and occupied and did the Supreme Court not cause all those schools and all those children to be disrupted, in the name of principle?

As far as precedent, well several courts on the way to the Supreme Court found the ACA unconstitutional, so there are some opinions concurring.

The really sad thing here is watching the President explain, once again, that his opponents are reasonable people, and he expects they will act in a kind and thoughtful way, not because they like him, but because these are men who want the best for the country, men who will use their faculties of reason to see things the right way.

He just does not seem to be able to learn from experience.

Memo to President Obama: These Republican Justices, these Republicant Congressmen and Senators and radio talk show hosts--they are not nice people. They are not "folks." They are bitter and they are selfish and they are determined to protect their own wealth and power, and damn the rest of the country. And, as they have said so often, Mitch McConnell being the clearest about this, the only thing which matters to him as a Republican or to any true Republican is that you fail, no matter what the price to the country. In fact, the bigger the price to the country, the deeper the hurt, the better, so the country will never again be tempted to vote for another radical socialist like you. That'll learn 'em, your big failure.

Much as I like the guy, I'm beginning to wonder whether or not anyone so starry eyed can actually lead this nation.