Out of intensive care

The Affordable Care Act, also derisively known as Obamacare, cleared a major hurdle when the Supreme Court narrowly decided to approve, 5-4, the main tenets of the legislation.  Conservatives were shocked that the mandate survived, they thought the main thrust would be struck down but some aspects upheld, as betrayed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell demanding ‘full repeal’ (rather than repeal of a rump).  Despite the SuperPacs, it seems it is not just love that money can’t buy.

That Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the Democrat-appointed judges was the big surprise.  US Conservatives are vituperative about ‘judicial activism’ (though curiously quiet when it favours them), yet this was the absolute opposite – the judges voting not to tamper with much of the act’s provisions.  Maybe Roberts is an old-style conservative who disdains the mean-spirited fanaticism of the Tea Party and here he could cock a snook at them.  Possibly he felt he owed Obama one after bungling the presidential inauguration.  Most likely, is that he reasoned he did not become the Chief Justice to meddle with the executive’s legislative programme, especially its signature law; if the electorate voted in politicians who put this act in place and are sufficiently perturbed, they can vote in politicians who will repeal it in November, was probably how he saw it.

As most of the benefits are backloaded and take effect in 2014, Barack Obama has to win the presidential race this year, to ensure that the omelette cannot be unscrambled.  The economy, if not tanking, continues to struggle and that is the most important electoral factor, so he’s trying to wrongfoot Mitt Romney on social issues as gay marriage and immigration.  There is talk of the Right being galvanised by the Supreme Court decision, but they were pretty eye-poppingly manic already.  The really crazy thing is, though it will save most Americans a good bit of money, attack ads have swung a majority against it with outright lies and a belief in some nebulous ‘freedom’ (to be selfish presumably).  One can’t criticise too harshly gullible Americans when overtly misleading advertising on the Alternative Vote pushed Britons from a majority in favour to decisively against, even when one of the ads implied that the British were too stupid to understand it (maybe it was right, after all).  The culture wars in America are not so dissimilar to those that wracked the final half-century of the Roman Republic, with progressives repeatedly battered by vested interests, the conservative Senate little realising it was signing its political death warrant, with the army eventually stepping in again and again.  We are not close to reaching that point yet in America but the polarisation of politics is symptomatic of a society widening dangerously.  Countries fall apart if the gap becomes too wide.