jimnyc
04-06-2012, 10:43 AM
I think this would backfire if he continues. I think Americans have more respect for the members of the SC than they do the president and his administration, and especially more trust that they know the constitution better than them. If his law gets struck down, or even just the mandate, I think the majority of Americans will be happy. And him whining throughout the campaign that "judicial activism" reversed the law will only make him look like uninformed, IMO of course.
President Barack Obama is laying groundwork to make the majority-conservative Supreme Court a campaign issue this fall, taking a political page from Republicans who have long railed against liberal judges who don't vote their way.
The emerging Democratic strategy to paint the court as extreme was little noted in this week's hubbub over Obama's assertion that overturning his health care law would be "unprecedented."
His statement Monday wasn't completely accurate, and the White House backtracked. But Obama was making a political case, not a legal one, and he appears ready to keep making it if the high court's five-member majority strikes down or cuts the heart out of his signature policy initiative.
The court also is likely to consider several other issues before the November election that could stir Obama's core Democratic supporters and draw crucial independent voters as well. Among those are immigration, voting rights and a revisit of a campaign finance ruling that Obama has already criticized as an outrage.
"We haven't seen the end of this," said longtime Supreme Court practitioner Tom Goldstein, who teaches at Stanford and Harvard universities. "The administration seems to be positioning itself to be able to run against the Supreme Court if it needs to or wants to."
While Obama has predicted victory in the health care case now before the court, his administration could blame overreach by Republican-appointed justices if the law is rejected, said Goldstein, who wrote a brief supporting the law's constitutionality.
This can be dangerous ground, as Obama discovered. Since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, few presidents have directly assailed the Supreme Court. In Obama's case, he issued an indirect challenge, but the former constitutional law professor tripped over the details.
http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/Obama-Courts/2012/04/05/id/435009
President Barack Obama is laying groundwork to make the majority-conservative Supreme Court a campaign issue this fall, taking a political page from Republicans who have long railed against liberal judges who don't vote their way.
The emerging Democratic strategy to paint the court as extreme was little noted in this week's hubbub over Obama's assertion that overturning his health care law would be "unprecedented."
His statement Monday wasn't completely accurate, and the White House backtracked. But Obama was making a political case, not a legal one, and he appears ready to keep making it if the high court's five-member majority strikes down or cuts the heart out of his signature policy initiative.
The court also is likely to consider several other issues before the November election that could stir Obama's core Democratic supporters and draw crucial independent voters as well. Among those are immigration, voting rights and a revisit of a campaign finance ruling that Obama has already criticized as an outrage.
"We haven't seen the end of this," said longtime Supreme Court practitioner Tom Goldstein, who teaches at Stanford and Harvard universities. "The administration seems to be positioning itself to be able to run against the Supreme Court if it needs to or wants to."
While Obama has predicted victory in the health care case now before the court, his administration could blame overreach by Republican-appointed justices if the law is rejected, said Goldstein, who wrote a brief supporting the law's constitutionality.
This can be dangerous ground, as Obama discovered. Since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, few presidents have directly assailed the Supreme Court. In Obama's case, he issued an indirect challenge, but the former constitutional law professor tripped over the details.
http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/Obama-Courts/2012/04/05/id/435009