Botched Operation?

Did the U.S. Attorney for the Affordable Care Act blow it on the mandate today with the Supremes?

Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. should be grateful to the Supreme Court for refusing to allow cameras in the courtroom, because his defense of Obamacare on Tuesday may go down as one of the most spectacular flameouts in the history of the court.

Stepping up to the podium, Verrilli stammered as he began his argument. He coughed, he cleared his throat, he took a drink of water. And that was before he even finished the first part of his argument. Sounding less like a world-class lawyer and more like a teenager giving an oral presentation for the first time, Verrilli delivered a rambling, apprehensive legal defense of liberalism's biggest domestic accomplishment since the 1960s—and one that may well have doubled as its eulogy.

Justice Elena Kagan wouldn't have screwed it up when she had the job.

So if America gets rolled back on health insurance reform, it''ll be partially due to Verrilli's poor preparation, and will be seen as such. But people need to see the big picture, that Republicans are causing a moral crisis in America, per Katrina vanden Heuvel:

It’s hard to point to a single priority of the Republican Party these days that isn’t steeped in moral failing while being dressed up in moral righteousness. This week, for example, they are hoping the Supreme Court will be persuaded by radical (and ridiculous) constitutional arguments to throw out some or all of the Affordable Care Act. Sure, you could argue that it’s really nice to make sure 31 million people who didn’t have health care can get it. Sure you could make the case that lifetime limits are a bad thing, that women shouldn’t have to pay more for health insurance just because they’re women, that the United States shouldn’t be a country where you die because you lost your coverage when you lost your job. But then again, liberty. Let’s not forget liberty. Also, freedom.

It is a very strange thing that the people who lecture most fervently about morality are those who are most willing to fight for policies that are so immoral. They watch Wall Street turn itself into the Las Vegas strip, take the economy down and destroy people’s lives and livelihoods. To that they say, “By God we need less regulation. Get me the hose, I have things to water down!” They see a CEO of a bank or a corporation, someone who passed off all of the risk and took on all of the reward, and they say, “Get that man a bigger bonus! In fact, get him two!”

The Supreme Court will issue their ruling in a few months, likely in June. Should they declare the mandate Unconstitutional but allow severability, a problem as it was not written as such in the entire 2000 page bill, then the bill may survive while insurance companies go mental.

Should their ruling kill the bill entirely, rolling back rights and programs already in place, then will that demoralize the Democrats...or give them the fire they need to not only hold the Presidency and Senate, but also flip back the House?