There was no reason that decision should have even been close, but sense did win out, and I suppose we should feel grateful for that.
Speaking of grateful: one more huge thanks to everyone who helped with our huge phone campaign to get the bill passed. House staffers told me that almost nobody ever phones in to support Democratic initiatives, especially not that bill, whereas every phone volunteer could tell you verbatim what inane crap Glenn Beck ranted about the night before. Offices really did think that they were going out on a huge limb by supporting that bill. From what I hear our phone campaign and Steve Benen’s Pass The Damn Senate Bill manifesto did help pull the party back from the cliff after Scott Brown’s surprise win.
Take a moment to feel good about that. A lot of people will get the treatment they need thanks in part to what you did. They tried to take that away for no reason but to spit in the President’s eye, they failed, and now it’s done.
***Update***
Litlebritdifrnt
For his remarks POTUS should just walk in the East Room with a football, slam it down, and walk out again.
zzyzx
Yeah, you guys did good with that!
Birthmarker
Please, fpers, bump up the donation page. My cc is at the ready and I prefer to do it through BJ.
Birthmarker
Please, fpers, bump up the donation page. My cc is at the ready and I prefer to do it through BJ.
Xecky Gilchrist
Phew indeed. I did a gob of congresscritter-calling about ACA, and I’m glad that, as lame as it is compared to real civilized healthcare, it’s still going.
It’s going to be fun watching the Redoublechins pule and moan about how a country where insurance companies can’t deny coverage for your chemo because you had a cold ten years ago is a country without freedom.
lamh35
HA. Even FoxNews has to show POTUS speech and he’s listing every thing the ACA does and Fox can’t turn it off…BAM!!!
Bobby Thomson
Thanks, Tim. With the Brown victory, you could sense the party getting ready to curl into a ball, which would have been disastrous. A lot of the people you called probably did lose, but they would have lost anyway, and even more people would have lost if the party had just retreated.
Birthmarker
Didn’t mean to double post.
the Conster
I really have a hard time grokking that Roberts was the 5th vote. Fuck that asshole Kennedy.
gogol's wife
@the Conster:
My husband told me it would be Roberts, and I didn’t believe him. I really should listen to him more often.
JenJen
I am just skipping and dancing this morning. :-)
Tim, thanks so much for getting all of us off our asses and on the phones. This is a BFD and the victory belongs to all of us.
Also, suck it, teatards!!
Cargo
Hooray for our side!
I expect the memes going forward will be:
“Obamacare is the largest tax increase in history”
and
“John Roberts is a closet liberal, impeaaaachh”
Chris
@the Conster:
“””I really have a hard time grokking that Roberts was the 5th vote. Fuck that asshole Kennedy.”””
I’ve been hearing people for days tell me that the decision hinged on what side of the bed Kennedy got up on this morning. Apparently he woke up on the wrong side of the bed and lost anyway. Up yours, Kennedy.
valdemar
http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/people-moving-to-canada-because-of-obamacare
Tenzil Kem
Good work, everybody! Good day. Good all around.
Spectre
http://i.imgur.com/hK9IG.jpg
Culture of Truth
I was right about the mandate, wrong about the result and wrong about Kennedy. Full refunds available.
Anyway I don’t what memes are out there. This is a win.
Rommie
Romney is insta-calling his chips all-in on Repeal. Good, IMO, as I think it’s the tipping point of telling Yet Another Group of voters to pound sand, only this time he’s leaving too few on his side to win the election.
To put it another way: if Team Obama loses the election because GOPRepeal is the issue that wins the day, they are a) incompetent political hacks, and b) they never had a chance in the first place. I don’t believe either is close to true.
gwangung
You know, I think this is the biggest, most practical take away for all this.
People shouldn’t overlook this.
“Almost nobody ever phones in to support Democratic initiatives.”
And we wonder why Congress has veered to the right…..
chopper
romney gave a quick crappy disjointed blubbering (isn’t it always?) speech about the decision. all i could think was LOL U MAD BRO?
Hoodie
@gogol’s wife: I think Roberts may have lost the coin toss with Kennedy, who will be spared the death threats.
Martin
Interesting statement by Roberts in the opinion, noted by TPM:
Guess tea with Scalia didn’t go so smoothly.
The Moar You Know
Just found out the best way to piss off every wingnut in my office is to run around and yell “Romneycare passed!”
hells littlest angel
Best day this country has had since November 4, 2008. Thanks, justice Roberts.
Oh, and stick it up your ass, Romney.
The Other Chuck
As seen on Twitter:
Linda Featheringill
@Martin:
Roberts:
Wow. He’s right of course. But still, that sentence says a lot.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@The Moar You Know:
Come November, you will find the newest, bestest way to piss off the office wingnuts:
“Obama’s Re-elected!”
Hal
I love how Romney thinks the Supreme Court’s job is to decide whether a policy is “good” or “bad” vs constitutional or unconstitutional. At least Rand Paul understands:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/28/1103965/-Sen-Rand-Paul-says-Supreme-Court-isn-t-the-boss-of-what-s-constitutional
Culture of Truth
“The Framers created a Federal Government of limited powers, and assigned to this Court the duty of enforcing those limits. The Court does so today. But the Court does not express any opinion on the wisdom of the Affordable Care Act. Under the Constitution, that judgment is reserved to the people.”
Xecky Gilchrist
Good grief, a very good friend of mine is going full wingnut about this on facebook. I never will understand some people – this guy is self-employed and his wife has an incurable, chronic disease that would be ripe for pissant recission horseshit by his insurer if it weren’t now illegal.
JGabriel
From what I’ve read of the assorted SCOTUS opinions so far, I’m getting the sense that, despite it’s social importance in terms of upholding PPACA, this ruling is probably not going to be cited for precedent very often.
It just seems too fractured to be cited as controlling in many instances going forward. Basically you’ve got Roberts agreeing with the conservative block on just about everything but then agreeing with the moderate block on the two most minimal ways to broadly uphold the PPACA.
In other words, if a lawyer tried to use Roberts’ decision as precedent, the opposing counsel could probably make a legitimate case that, if you read carefully, Roberts was actually on the other side — no matter which side you’re arguing! Outside of the PPACA itself, the only principle this decision seems to strongly uphold is a broad taxing power for Congress, and even that is only by a 5-4 vote.
ETA: To the lawyers in the audience, is that basically right or am I completely wrong?
.
dr. bloor
Thanks for that unwanted reminder that Martha Croakley’s shit-ass campaign almost killed a generational opportunity to move the ball forward on health care. I’m still pissed at her for that train wreck.
Violet
Calling representatives to urge them to support the bill was great. I really felt like I was involved in my government. I’d be up for that kind of campaign on other key issues.
trollhattan
@valdemar:
Dear lord, that’s precious. “I’m moving to (reputedly sokkalist country) Canada, to get away from sokkalist Obamacare.” Too chicken to go all in and say Cuba.
chopper
@Hal:
wow, two real constitutional scholars there.
chopper
@Culture of Truth:
no they didn’t. anyhoo…
joes527
It is hilarious that during the “Dewey Defeats Truman” time the spin was that the mandate being struck down was a huge blow for the Obama administration, and now the spin is that leaving ACA alive as an issue for the election is a huge blow for the Obama administration.
Water balloon
When I called my congressman, Tim Bishop, right before the House voted, I asked the woman who answered the phone if she’d been hearing from a lot of crazy people that weekend. She laughed and said they had been hearing from some very passionate constituents. Only a few months before, he’d had to be escorted out of one of his town halls by police after a near riot broke out. I was happy to see he did get reflected in 2010, if just by about 100 votes.
Citizen_X
@chopper: Well he did actually support health care before he was against it!
Culture of Truth
Gingsburg:
“By requiring most residents to obtain insurance, see Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 111M, §2 (West 2011), the Commonwealth ensured that insurers would not be left with only the sick as customers. As a result, federal lawmakers observed, Massachusetts succeeded where other States had failed.”
“In coupling the minimum coverage provision with guaranteed issue and community-rating prescriptions, Congressfollowed Massachusetts’ lead.”
hee hee
Spaghetti Lee
@joes527:
I’ve seen that already, on lefty sites no less. ‘Obama’s in real trouble now, ‘cuz Romney’s going to run against him on taxes and win. I’m so very concerned!’ These were the same people saying four hours ago that the supreme court was going to kill the whole law.
Martin
@joes527: Never forget: everything is good news for John McCain.
We should just dub that Halperin’s Law.
Soonergrunt
People who have decided to move to Canada to escape Obamacare:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/people-moving-to-canada-because-of-obamacare
The stupid–it burns.
Ksmiami
@gogol’s wife: Roberts is not someone I agree with but I could at least not hurl being in the same room with him which is pretty rare for a republican these days
Hal
Flipping by HLN with Robin Meade and Jason Johnson from politic365 was saying this is really a win, wait for it, for both Obama and Romney! See, Romney raised 200 grand after the decision, which just seemed to blow Robin Meades mind, and Obama will have to defend the law or something, so Romney wins too.
Also, is Robin Meade a horrible host or what? She seems so flighty and all over the place.
humanoid.panda
A minor quibble, but wasn’t it Jon Chair who wrote the “pass.the.damn.bill” manifesto?
scav
@Soonergrunt: They have to find it on a map first. And I don’t know if their SatNav will recocnize CanadadadaDADDY! especially after being drenched during passionate weeping.
KS in MA
@The Moar You Know: LOL! That’s a keeper.
Southern Beale
I would like to punch David Sirota right now. His Twitter feed is a cavalcade of Firebagging.
ThresherK
NPR is insufferable.
(Yeah, that’s an autotext in my computer, too.)
Anyplace I can tune to decent live talk about this decision?
Southern Beale
@Soonergrunt:
I’m pretty sure that the #MovingToCanada Twitter feed is a hoax. I clicked on some of the names, they’re all flaming lefties.
chrismealy
Tim F, you’re the best. Thanks for fightIng. It meant a lot.
SatanicPanic
You did some great work on that TimF and at just the right time. Thanks again
Davis X. Machina
@Southern Beale: So nu? Ma mishtanah ha-laila ha-zeh?
JGabriel
@the Conster:
Sort of the same here. I’m not surprised that Roberts voted to uphold, particularly on the narrowest grounds possible, nor am I surprised that Kennedy voted to strike down the PPACA, but I am surprised that Kennedy was a holdout where Roberts was not.
Maybe this is an anomaly, or maybe it’s a transition point. I can see Kennedy getting crankier and more Fox-News-Conservative as he gets older while Roberts becomes the center of the court instead.
It tells you how far the court has swung to the right when John Frickin’ Roberts is the center.
.
joes527
@Soonergrunt: THAT’S IT! I’m calling shenanigans.
It is not physically possible for anyone to be that stupid.
chopper
@Davis X. Machina:
really you just say ‘mah nishtanah’.
Tonal Crow
Thanks Tim for the great work motivating us to talk off our representatives’ ears on the ACA!
amk
cnn – corrupt news network. Ted Turner must be weeping.
lamh35
@Xecky Gilchrist: ya know you can “unfriend” people from FB. I have done it many times. At the very least, I have it so that I don’t receive any post from these people and they aren’t allowed to see some of my post, but it still says that I am a “friend” so they are none the wiser.
Davis X. Machina
(via “Brad De Long)
Splitting Image
The one other thing I would keep reminding people is that neither Canada nor any other country got universal or near-universal coverage overnight.
Tommy Douglas and others started pushing for Medicare back in the 1930s, and it was an electoral fluke in the 1960s that he was the leader of the federal NDP when Lester Pearson became Prime Minister with a minority and was forced to seek out a coalition partner. Douglas broke whatever arms had to be broken when he saw the chance to get some form of Medicare passed.
Even so, the 1960s law left a loophole allowing doctors to bill patients over and above what Medicare was paying for, which effectively left some forms of health care unaffordable in spite of Medicare. That loophole wasn’t closed until 1984. Douglas may not have been happy about that, but he took what he was able to get.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but this is something to build on. Anyone who argues that the country would have been better off if the bill had failed and the country would have had to start over from the beginning is simply wrong. Every other country’s experience with health care proves the opposite.
chopper
@JGabriel:
i don’t think roberts is aiming at the court’s center. i do think that this was going to end up being a decision people look back on 20+ years from now and as chief he was concerned about how history would see the court. of course he’d never admit that.
lamh35
@Hal: that just means I need to donate to OfA right now. Moneybomb for Obama?
Comrade Mary
Well done, Tim and all you Yanks.
Also, this fucking riles. (Meant to type “rules”, but hey, they both work.)
Xecky Gilchrist
@lamh35: Thanks – I know about unfriending and have used it (in fact the first time I did was on a guy who could. not. shut. up. about how horrible Obamacare was during the Wingnut Summer of ’09). This guy is fine 99% of the time, but has moments when he goes off the rails. I’m just hiding the posts for now – if he keeps it up, I’ll drop him.
Yutsano
@Splitting Image: And thanks to Vermont we already started here. Next up should be California if the referendum gets off the ground. After that, since the basic payment framework is in place, the other states fall like dominoes.
Chris
@Xecky Gilchrist:
I’ll unfriend “friends” without a second thought for excessive wingnuttery unless they’re fairly close. What’s more annoying is family. Much higher tolerance threshold there, because them you have to live with. Still, there are one or two I might have to unfriend eventually.
Seanly
@Hal:
Yeah, but she’s purty & has a cute laugh.
Back on topic: this is a win for Obama if we donate money. I’ll be putting my money where my mouth (ok, typing) is.
Amir Khalid
Mitt says in his reax that he wants to repeal and replace PPACA, but the Congressional Republican party is set on repeal without replace, having dropped its plans for the latter because the Teabagger tendency wants nothing to do with any kind of healthcare reform. What happens when Mitt’s rhetoric clashes with his party’s?
Yutsano
@Amir Khalid:
Sing with me now!
“Brave Sir Willard ran away…“
Davis X. Machina
@Yutsano
Democratic centralism.
Soonergrunt
@Southern Beale: That’s as may be, but if I got taken in, it’s only because of Poe’s Law.
David Koch
I want to thank everyone who made this possible: Grover Norquist, Jane Hamsher, Americans for Prosperity, Fixxed News, Hate Radio, Sarah Palin, Mark Halperin, the Khmer Rouge purity police, The New York Times, Fred Hiatt, and the corporate media. We couldn’t have done it without you guys!
4-Mo-Years!
4-Mo-Years!
4-Mo-Years!
4-Mo-Years!
4-Mo-Years!
Spaghetti Lee
At the risk of sounding rude, I am rather eagerly looking forward to John and/or Doug weighing in.
WereBear
Exactly. Perfectionism is the enemy of reform; the landmark 1964 Voting Rights Act was also derided in its time as being too weak; as did its predecessor, but look what has been built on it.
JPL
Help…WTF does this mean
This was a comment under the Health Care ruling article at the Washington Post
scav
@Soonergrunt: You’re also swimming against more and more people apparently failing the Turing Test. Not a Law, just an Observation.
bemused
@Soonergrunt:
I have a hard time believing these are not snark. Rightwingers actually talking about moving to Canada because ACA upheld? Does not compute.
WereBear
I’ll take a crack at it: Without the lash of imminent death, those lazy so-and-sos would never be able to get into Harvard, learn schmoozing skills, and get a financial job that will pay enough for free market health care.
That, of course, is the real tragedy.
Tonal Crow
@bemused:
It computes as much as “keep your dirty govarmint hands outta by Medicare!”
Martin
@JPL: It means that now that poor people can buy their own health care, they’ll become lazy, with nothing to aspire to.
Reasonable 4ce
I’m waiting to hear what Jeff This-Is-a-Trainwreck-for-the-Obama-Administration Toobin has to say about this.
ericblair
@WereBear:
I think that gives them a little too much credit. I read it as “without the lash of imminent death, the working poor will slack off and not work so hard at a minimum wage job to get money to pay their medical bills until they finally keel over at their posts and we dump them in a ditch with the dead mule.”
Reasonable 4ce
I’m waiting to hear what Jeff This-Is-a-Trainwreck-for-the-Obama-Administration Toobin has to say about this.
Litlebritdifrnt
And so it begins, John Roberts Wiki paged changed to “Traitor”
Ooops forgot the linky dinky
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/photo-john-roberts-wikipedia-page-vandalized-chief-traitor
Delia
@JPL:
It means they’ll know that society regards them as real people with real rights even if they never get rich, a terrible blow to the Galtians.
And I suspected the wind was blowing this way after Scalia had his blow-out front page tantrum about immigration the other day. I figured it had to do with more than one decision.
scav
So now where are the religiously funded soup kitchen to get their unemployed sick people to preach at, huh! It’s a Blow against Religious FreeeeDom!
low-tech cyclist
The winter of 2010 was the only time in my life I’ve repeatedly called my Congresscritters like that. I made sure to call my Representative’s and both my Senators’ offices once or twice a week with my PTDB spiel. I just couldn’t bear to see it all go down the drain so easily.
It was important – a ‘big fucking deal,’ to quote my favorite Vice President of this century. And it was worth it.
scav
@Litlebritdifrnt: Somebody should have reminded their hordes not to spike the Supremes after the verdict.
WereBear
@low-tech cyclist: Yup, same here, it was a feature of my lunch hour.
I do love VP Biden! Both of us got his “BFD” tshirt.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Litlebritdifrnt: And so it begins, John Roberts Wiki paged changed to “Traitor”
I imagine his switchboard is melting under the heat of ten million heartfelt but poorly-articulated death threats.
slim's tuna provider
@JGabriel: no matter what, it was not going to be very precedential. part of the reason that clement’s argument was so successful was that population-wide affirmative mandates were so rare in our history. part of the reason they’re so rare are that they’re a dodge to appease libertarians, not actual policy. usually you just require someone to do smth., say (correctly!) that it affects interstate commerce, and call it a day. here, the argument contra the mandate was based on disaggregating the requirement to purchase the mandate from a private insurer from the rest of the law.
Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
@The Moar You Know: The Moar You Know Says:
Winnity-win-win.
Culture of Truth
Toobin tweeted that he is curretly eating crow
Supernumerary Charioteer
@JPL: It means “I bought into the 1991-era hypothesis of ‘The Soviet Union failed, therefore liberals can’t do anything right’ so hard that I will throw it out at any opportunity, no matter how nonsensical it is to use it.”
Comrade Mary
@Litlebritdifrnt: OMG. We have the same birthday AND the same occupation! What are the odds?
(OK, he’s a few years older than me.)
geg6
Tim, it was you that spurred us on to that effort.
Bravo to you and to all of us.
eohippus
Because I love der schadenfreude, I spent the morning reading Freerepublic threads about the ACA decision. It was mostly what you’d expect:
You forgot about sharia!
It’s all about the tranny.
Their tears are all very sweet, except the idiocy. Since Roberts called it a tax, the next rallying cry will be “Obama passed teh evial taxxors!1!111!”
The election just got weirder.
Rex Everything
Corporate America may have paid the piper–nonetheless, if WE ALL call the tune, the piper can lead us to reason.
eohippus
Don’t be alarmed now.
4tehlulz
>the tranny of the minority.
HAWT
Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
@Xecky Gilchrist:
Xecky Gilchrist Says:
Obama Dergangement Syndrome knows no logic, internal consistency, or application to real-life situations.
Truly a sight to behold.
catclub
@gogol’s wife: “I really should listen to him more often.”
That way lies madness.
catclub
@Xecky Gilchrist: “I imagine his switchboard is melting under the heat of ten million heartfelt but poorly-articulated death threats.”
Run over by a herd of medicare funded scooters?
catclub
@The Other Chuck: UNfortunately, a lot more talking about leaving than leaving.
Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
@lamh35: Facebook: Feeding the public’s passive-aggresive needs since the early 21st Century.
Comrade Mary
OMG^2 — triumphant orchestral version of Still Alive!
dmbeaster
Faux News initially reported that the individual mandate had been struck down by the Court (as did CNN and CBS). Post is at 9:21 am – cant seem to find link to just that post.
Which, of course, resulted in statements about how that was good news for Romney!
dmbeaster
The post is at (;21 a.m. at that link (cant seem to find a link to just that one post).
Xecky Gilchrist
@catclub: Run over by a herd of medicare funded scooters?
LOL!
There’ll probably be Clear-Channel-funded gatherings where they get a bulldozer and crush a pile of his previous legal rulings.
Delia
@dmbeaster:
The exact quote was Dewey Defeats Truman.
FlipYrWhig
@Xecky Gilchrist: He probably thinks of himself as someone who has worked very hard to deal with his family health situation — and doesn’t want Johnny-come-latelies to get for free what he had to suffer for. The key to wingnuttery is always seeing yourself as getting hosed by the government, never benefiting from it.