So, a few days after the Obamacare decision came down, after I had read through the decision, slept on it a few nights and had contemplated what could possibly have led to the outcome I saw, I published this blog post describing what I thought of the decision, how I thought it had happened, why I thought it had happened and what the likely outcome of it would be. I was surprised by the reaction from a couple of my readers who expressed serious reservations about my reasoning capacity.
Since that time my take has become more or less the accepted wisdom of those who follow the court closely. In fact it is pretty much considered to be accurate by virtually every media commentator on the subject. In fact I heard an interview with a Supreme Court expert on a talk show yesterday who said that Roberts’ decision had created a palpable and potentially permanent schism in the “conservative wing” of the court. And last night Antonin Scalia took the almost unheard-of step of doing an interview where he answered questions about several decisions (including Bush v Gore) made while he was sitting on the court. I believe Scalia did that in large part to allow him to give the conservative case for the Supreme Court since he no longer trusts Roberts to do so.
I am 100% convinced that everything I said in that post was not merely accurate, but was quite frankly ahead of the curve. Well, not quite everything. I had predicted a “double digit” swing in Obama’s favor. The day before the decision came down Romney had a five point lead in the daily Rasmussen Presidential Tracking poll. At one point he dropped to a -2 in that poll, which would have been a 7 point swing (not quite double digits) and today he has a 1 point lead, so it is currently a four point swing.
Plus in the comments I had further said that I expected Obamacare to gain in the polls as well. Which it has, but not nearly as much as I had expected.
So although I believe that I absolutely nailed the political and social motivations and impact of Roberts’ betrayal, it appears that I overestimated the impact on Obamacare itself, and Obama has not risen as much as I expected him to.
Now, I personally believe that the polls are now reacting to a series of incredible political blunders by Obama, the most critical of which is the “You didn’t build that” speech, and had he been able to keep his actual beliefs hidden, as he usually tries to do, he would be higher in the polls, but that’s merely speculation.
I will concede that I misjudged the impact of the decision on the American voting public and that I should probably have a little more faith in the public (at least 3% more faith anyway).
4 users commented in " Revisiting John Roberts’ disastrous decision "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackHeh. I guess you forgot that I essentially agreed with your political analysis, I just disagreed with your assessment of how it would help Obama and hurt Romney. At worst, as I argued, the Obamacare issue is a wash in terms of political advantage (although in my heart of hearts I still think it provides a slight advantage to Romney).
BTW, I don’t trust the polls. If Romney can stay on the offensive I think he has a better than even chance of winning in November.
I really do think I was way ahead of the curve on this reading and that my political analysis was dead-on. As I said, this has probably permanently ruined my opinion of John Roberts.
The only hope I have for Roberts is that he is now looking back and saying “Crap, I was trying to smooth things over and that just made things WORSE!” And maybe he’ll stick to the law and his core philosophy in the future.
Hope so.
You really should rename this blog ‘I Told You So.’
I dunno…. something makes me think that anyone who becomes a supreme court judge tends to believe they are always right…
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