If the SCOTUS rules Obamacare unconstitutional...

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

look at it this way:  If Obamacare is struck down, the Dems would have wasted two congressional majorities (1994, 2010) in the past 20 years attempting to overhaul health care...without a thing to show for it.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

But I think that the court is more likely to sever the mandate and leave the rest.

there is no way they can parse it like that.  if the mandate is ruled unconstitutional, then the whole thing fails.  and you would probably see Congress move very quickly to pass a law requiring kids be covered under existing insurance.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

if the mandate is ruled unconstitutional, then the whole thing fails.

Then that means the entire 1996 Telecommunications Act is unconstitutional, because it included the Communications Decency Act, which was ruled unconstitutional.

It also means the entire 1996 welfare "reform" law is unconstitutional, because the part that allowed states to require drug testing was ruled unconstitutional.

See how that works?

 

I understand only some portions of other bills have been struck down...but to say, as your logic seems to be saying, that the nucleus of a bill can be struck down while allowing the rest of it to stand, is not an opinion based on reality of the situation.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

But if the whole law required the mandate, how do you explain that parts of the law are already in effect today and the mandate isn't yet in effect.

I'm not saying the parts already phased in require the mandate, but the mandate is central to the bill.  The SCOTUS is not in the business of making a VW Bug out of a Lincoln Town Car.  Since Congress would have to revisit the bill even if only the mandate is stripped out, the SCOTUS would just leave it to the Congress to start over.  

There is too much of the bill can NOT exist without the mandate to justify the SCOTUS going through the rest of the bill and picking the parts that could survive without the mandate.  

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Listening to a CSPAN feed right now... Obama once again has chosen awful appointees.  The Solicitor General and his assistants stumble on answer after answer.  It's pretty much their fault if this gets overturned.

you put too much weight on the oral arguments...

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

you put too much weight on the oral arguments...

It's important in a close case.  This is basically lobbying Kennedy hour and the President's side is looking bad.

but you're assuming Kennedy was ever on the fence regarding the mandate.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

This is on severability, not the mandate.

ok, but the severability is a pretty open and shut case - the mandate is just too central and too big of a part of the bill to cleave out.  Even many Dems have said so over the last 2 years.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/03/argument-recap-a-lift-for-the-mandate/

"A common reaction, across the bench, was that the Justices themselves did not want the onerous task of going through the remainder of the entire 2,700 pages of the law and deciding what to keep and what to throw out, and most seemed to think that should be left to Congress.  They could not come together, however, on just what task they would send across the street for the lawmakers to perform.  The net effect may well have shored up support for the individual insurance mandate itself."

that logic does not make sense...if they understandably don't want to go through the 2700 pages to find what can be severed from the madate, they are likely to throw out the whole thing, rather than uphold the mandate.

in other words, they're not going to spare the mandate just to keep from throwing out the entire law

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

agreed, Kennedy's comment was spot on, and Scalia's point was a home run: "[you actually expect us to parse this 2700 page bill to find the parts that are severable?]"

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Obama's people and he himself did a terrible job of selling it to the public, a terrible job of passing it

the temperature of the Summer 2009 townhall meetings told you the public wasn't going to like it.  But Obama was between a rock and a hard place, being also pressured by the Left.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

The 2009 town hall demonstrations against the health care bill were Dick Army-land organized astroturf bs.

were the 2010 midterms also?

the majority of the Dem losses of 1994 and 2010 were a direct result of health care reform efforts.  Large scale Reforms to the health care system are going to be politically damaging, at least in the short term, regardless if its the Reps or Dems doing the reforms.

if you don't realize that, then this conversation is pointless.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Surely Kennedy or Roberts, not Stevens, as the deciding vote in issue 3?

isn't Stevens retired?!