House Votes for Repeal of Health Law in Symbolic Act

[Hauldren Collider]

Justice Kennedy loves stare decisis, regardless.

Yes, that's true. Although it should be pointed out that there have been several very important reversals of longstanding precedent in the past. I don't want to compare HCR to Jim Crow but Brown v. Board is a good example of what I'm talking about. I think it's honestly a tossup whether the Supreme Court will uphold or reject the bill though.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Ezra Klein's [FRIEND IS] a fool. There is absolutely zero chance this will not be taken up by the Supreme Court. The court took up ****ing Bush v. Gore, they aren't afraid of cases with political fallout.

EDIT: Actually it's not clear to me if Ezra Klein agrees with his friend or not. By "take his friend's bet" does he mean he would bet on the side of it reaching the Supreme Court or on his friend's side (the opposite)?

EDIT 2: Okay I'm dumb and misread it.

Why anyone attempting to be taken seriously regarding judicial processes and matters of constitutionality would take Ezra (it's old and confusing) Klein as a reputable source boggles my mind.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/rig...nservativ.html

[DaShi]

Do people really need to be reminded that only 2 judges find fault with ACA, while twelve others have ruled it constitutional? Why should the Supreme Court waste its time on this nonissue? Especially, when the judges against it can't even make a strong argument.


Still I guess it is something for Oggie and DD to bleed ignorance all over.

[Hauldren Collider]

If any of the circuit courts come to contradictory conclusions the supreme court will be forced to hear the case. And given its importance, I doubt the supreme court would consider hearing this case a waste of time at all.

And I would disagree with you as a matter of opinion on the strength of the district court arguments.

[giblets]

Is support for repeal vastly overstated?
By Greg Sargent

As you regulars know, I've been arguing here for days that overly simplistic polling has been exaggerating the support for blowing up the Affordable Care Act. When pollsters drill down with fine-grained questions, support for full repeal plummets.

The internals of today's New York Times/CBS poll dramatize this in perhaps the clearest terms yet.

The poll first asked people a straight-up question -- should we do away with the law completely, or let it stand -- and found that 40 percent favor repeal, versus 48 percent who want to leave it as is. That near-split mirrors virtually all other polls that asked the question this way -- they all find some solid support for repeal.

But here's where it gets interesting. The NYT/CBS poll then asked the pro-repeal camp whether they want to "repeal all of the health care law, or only certain parts of it." Suddenly the number who favor full repeal drops to 20 percent -- one-fifth -- while 18 percent peel off and say they want to repeal "certain parts."

It gets even better. The poll then asked people who support repeal an open-ended question: Which parts of the law do you want done away with? The number who said "everything" drops again, this tiime to eight percent. Eleven percent want the individual mandate repealed. But guess what? The number who called for repeal of other key individual items in the bill -- the pre-existing conditions piece; the coverage for people up to age 26; and so on -- was consistently one percent or less for each of them.

Now, some will say this proves nothing: People don't know what's in the bill, so they can't say what they want repealed. But this is exactly the point. Fine-grained polling reveals that people who say they want repeal may be expressing generalized frustration about the bill, or dislike of certain parts, such as the individual mandate, rather than a desire to see it blown to smithereens.

Indeed, today's Times poll hints at two other reasons entirely for that generalized frustration: 56 percent say the bill hasn't been clearly explained to them, and only 13 percent think they've enjoyed the law's benefits.

I'm going to stress yet again that this doesn't mean the bill isn't unpopular. It is. But detailed polling shows that there are many reasons for the bill's unpopularity, and that it does not necessarily translate into support for full repeal. The pattern is overwhelmingly clear: When people are offered a range of options, rather than just a straight-up choice between leaving the bill as is or getting rid of it entirely, multiple polls show that support for the latter drops fast. Yet this point is almost entirely absent from the discussion.

I think that as people get a better understanding of the bill they will become more supportive because of its many good aspects. I must be crazy.

[Dinner]

The latest poll is 82% of Americans do not want the health care reform bill repealed, and it will not be repealed, yet rather then do anything positive or meaningful the Republicans have decided to waste all of the Congress's time with nonsense which doesn't accomplish anything. Oh, and the Republicans said they'd reduce the deficit yet they've increased it by $368 billion per year. Anyone who believes these liars is an idiot.

[DaShi]

The biggest problem the republicans have with the repeal is that they are offering no alternative. I've said this to a friend of mine that Obama may just be a master strategist. He sets the republicans up to destroy themselves. His victory over Hillary Clinton in 2008 was the result of a rather nasty campaign that made a lot of Americans sick of those kinds of politics. So when the general election occurred Obama ran a relatively clean campaign against McCain's vitriol. That turned a lot of voters away from McCain, who began to look unhinged. It also set the stage for Sarah Palin, who remains a godsend to Democrats wanting to point to the loony right. Now he has set up healthcare as the albatross to hang around the republicans necks in 2012. While Obama was focused on healthcare his poll numbers dropped and many criticized him for ignoring the unemployment rates. Now he generally dismisses it as complete while focusing his rhetoric on creating jobs. Healthcare reform has become a nice trap for the republicans at a time when it will matter more in the elections. The republicans have invested so much energy in defeating it that whether they pursue it or not they will lose.

[Tupac Shakur]

So when the general election occurred Obama ran a relatively clean campaign against McCain's vitriol. That turned a lot of voters away from McCain, who began to look unhinged.

This is completely retarded. Obama won because the economy went in the ****ter on the watch of a two-term Republican president. Obama could have run the most negative campaign in history and he still would have won. I hope your friend was kind enough to tell you how ****ing stupid your analysis is.

[DaShi]

No, he said that Drake is a moron for believing that only one thing factored in the election. I asked him how he knew Drake and he responded, "Who's Drake?"

[DaShi]

Also, Tupac, my post is about strategy. Unless you believe that Obama was the one who caused the economy to go in the ****ter during the Bush presidency, I really don't see what you are contributing. Other than stupidity, which I wholly support.

[giblets]

If the Republicans stopped focusing on health care now I don't think it would be a problem for them in the upcoming election. But they're probably not going to stop.

[Tupac Shakur]

Also, Tupac, my post is about strategy.

And my post is about strategy being irrelevant in nearly every presidential election. There is no strategy that will save Obama in 2012 if the economic recovery doesn't pick up soon; the fact that you think messaging about "rightwing crazies" or healthcare reform will matter just shows how little you really understand.

[DaShi]

Yes, that is why all the polls show that Obama couldn't win a general election against the current front runners of the GOP, why McCain only picked up three diehard republican states in 2008, and why Bush lost in 2000 and 2004. Drake, I thought you were smarter than this.

[Tupac Shakur]

Yes, that is why all the polls showing that Obama couldn't win a general election against the current front runners of the GOP and McCain only picked up three diehard republican states in 2008.

This doesn't even make any sense. You need to fix your syntax, as well as provide some details on the polling you are sourcing.

[DaShi]

Simple fix. Sorry that it was so difficult for you to figure out.