Domenico Montanaro has a must-read piece on how Solicitor General Donald Verrilli won over Chief Justice John Roberts with his arguments over the constitutionality of President Obama’s health care law.
Become a member to get many great benefits -- exclusive analysis, trending news, a private podcast, no ads and more!
Recent College Grads Stay With Obama
A Reuters/Ipsos poll of recent college graduates finds them supporting President Obama over Mitt Romney, 52% to 27%.
Interestingly, 58% said they have “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of interest in the upcoming presidential election. That compares with 62% who went to the polls four years ago.
Quote of the Day
“I’m not putting my toe anywhere but I’m just going on my favorite radio
show and talking about a subject that’s very dear to me.”
— Former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), quoted by Politicker, when asked if he was putting his “toe in the water” for a return to public service.
Obama Gains in National Poll
A new Democracy Corps poll shows President Obama now leads Mitt Romney in the presidential race by a 3-point margin, 49% to 46% — a net 3-point improvement since last month.
Key finding: “Obama’s gains come partially from gains on whom voters trust to handle the economy. He was down 7 points to Romney in our last poll but is now dead-even. Mitt Romney has asked voters to contrast his business experience against Obama’s record on the economy. Voters are beginning to make that choice, and it has moved voters away from Romney.”
Roberts Jokes About Hiding This Summer
Chief Justice John Roberts joked that he’ll be spending some time in “an impregnable fortress” now that the Supreme Court has ended a session in which he cast the the decisive vote upholding President Obama’s health care law, the AP reports.
Responding to a question about his summer plans, Roberts quipped that he thought his planned trip to Malta to teach a class was a “good idea.”
The 8 Stages of Conservative Grief
Slate looks at the GOP response to the Obamacare decision.
Flashback of the Day
ABC News digs up video of Mitt Romney admiting in a January 2008 Republican presidential debate that the individual health care mandate he passed in Massachusetts was indeed a tax.
CHARLIE GIBSON: Governor, you imposed tax penalties in Massachusetts…
MITT ROMNEY: Yes, we said, look, if people can afford to buy it, either buy the insurance or pay your own way; don’t be free-riders and pass on the cost to your health care to everybody else…
Lawmaker Celebrates the Defeat of Obamacare
Slate captured video of Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) reacting to a false report about the health care mandate being overturned.
Radio Host Blames Mind-Altering Drugs for Decision
Radio talk show host Michael Savage offered one explanation for Chief Justice John Roberts upholding the health care law:
“Let’s talk about Roberts. I’m going to tell you something that you’re not going to hear anywhere else, that you must pay attention to. It’s well known that Roberts, unfortunately for him, has suffered from epileptic seizures. Therefore he has been on medication. Therefore neurologists will tell you that medication used for seizure disorders, such as epilepsy, can introduce mental slowing, forgetfulness and other cognitive problems. And if you look at Roberts’ writings you can see the cognitive dissociation in what he is saying.”
Jon Stewart Nails the Cable News Networks
As many predicted, Jon Stewart had a lot of fun with the mistakes made by CNN and Fox News reporting yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling.
Ignore the Electoral College
Charlie Cook: “It is a source of constant amusement to me that so many people obsess — as if fiddling with a Rubik’s Cube — over the various combinations of states that could get either President Obama or Mitt Romney to the magic number of 270 votes in the Electoral College. The guilty include pros at both ends of the political spectrum; people who ought to know better; and armchair analysts who seem to think that they can crack the magic code.”
“The simple fact is that our nation has had 56 presidential elections. In 53 of them (94.6 percent), the winner in the Electoral College also happened to be the one with the most popular votes… So people are expending a lot of time and energy trying to figure out something that has about a 1-in-20 chance of happening.”
Did Politics Save Obamacare?
David Bernstein: “I should note that I think the Supreme Court is a political body (which is not to say that its decisions are primarily motivated by partisanship or political ideology) and that one can expect that the Court’s rulings are affected by outside events. As I noted long ago, the challenge to the individual mandate would have stood no chance if the president and the ACA were riding very high in the polls, as the Court would not have had the political wherewithal to write what would be seen as a radical opinion invalidating a popular law from a popular president. Similarly, the level of heat defenders of the ACA were giving the Court could have persuaded Roberts that discretion was the better part of valor…”
“I don’t find it at all illegitimate for political actors to put pressure on the Court, so long as they stay within proper legal bounds, and keep their rhetoric within the broad boundaries of decency. But it is ironic that while liberal critics were quick to accuse the Court of playing politics by taking seriously the Obamacare challenges, it may turn out that it was only politics that saved the ACA.”
What You Should Know About Politics… But Don’t
Coming next month: What You Should Know About Politics… But Don’t by Jessamyn Conrad.
The Escape Artist
First Read: “Yesterday’s SCOTUS outcome was typical of what we’ve seen for Obama over the past four years: He finds his back against the wall — sometimes due to his own doing, sometimes not — and then escapes disaster. We saw this during the Dem primary season before Iowa (remember the summer of ’07); during Jeremiah Wright; during the ’08 general after the McCain-Palin bounce, during the 2009-2010 health-care fight; and now after the Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday, which easily could have gone the other way.”
“And make no mistake: The decision upholding the law was something Obama and his allies NEEDED; they had to have something to show for the steep price they paid for the health-care law. This was a hurdle the president had to clear to get to November; but the ruling is no political booster rocket. He simply doesn’t have a new drag. Of course, as relates to his re-election, Obama once again finds his back against the wall. The unemployment rate is at 8.2%, and a majority of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. Can he again pull a rabbit from his hat here? We’ll find out in four months.”
No Wave Coming in House Elections
Rothenberg Political Report: “Our new projection
for gains/losses in the House this November is now between a +1 gain for
Republicans and a +6 gain for Democrats.”
“We rate 201 seats a
safe GOP, 161 safe Dem, 25 as Lean/Favored for the GOP, 19 for
Lean/Favored for the Dems, and we have 29 total tossups.”
Romney and Obama May Now Ignore Health Care
BuzzFeed notes that both presidential campaigns, “like the media, also have good reason to move on, as a slow summer week interrupted by the July 4 holiday approaches.”
“For Obama, the health care measure’s abiding unpopularity means that he is, at best, mounting a spirited defense. Romney, meanwhile, has centered his campaign on the clear case that the American economy is broken and he can fix it. He has avoided policy specifics, promising to ‘replace’ the current health care legislation without advancing a specific plan. A campaign centered on health care policy — which might have come from a different Supreme Court verdict — would have pulled him into the weeds of an issue on which his own support for near-universal, government-backed health care in Massachusetts makes him a flawed messenger.”
Effects of Court Decision on Campaign Still Not Clear
Politico: “Over the next six weeks or so, health care will be an unpredictable race within a race: The Obama campaign will seek to downplay the more divisive details of the law and tout the court’s approval of his signature legislative accomplishment as proof of his effectiveness — courtesy of an unlikely bipartisan partnership with a powerful conservative, Chief Justice John Roberts.”
“For Mitt Romney, who had every reason to expect the conservative high court to strike down at least a big part of the law, the decision requires a bit of recalibration. He had hoped to portray a full or partial repeal as evidence Obama squandered the trust of the American electorate by wasting two years that could have been used to create more jobs.”
Washington Post: “If conservatives
needed any more motivation to unseat President Obama, they got it
Thursday from the Supreme Court, which provided fresh political
opportunities for Mitt Romney even as it handed the president a legal
victory… Romney’s history, however, may make it difficult for him to capitalize on that argument.”
Europe Acts to Shore Up Banks
“European leaders at a two-day summit in Brussels said they would speed up plans to create a single supervisor to oversee the euro zone’s banks, and agreed on measures aimed at reducing soaring borrowing costs for Spain and Italy,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Reuters notes it’s “a sign the bloc is adopting a more flexible approach to solving its two-year old debt crisis.”
Alex Burns: “Like the health care decision, it’s not as if a move toward economic stability in Europe is going to give the president a big boost at the polls. But it staves off a different outcome (another global financial crisis) that could have been catastrophic for Obama, and that grim scenario looks somewhat less likely today.”
