Yeah, I kinda hope the Republicans run on this in the fall.
Will the Roberts' Court go the way of the Hughes Court of the 1930's? Striking down provision after provision of the New Deal, Roosevelt was fed up and advocated a reorganization of the Supreme Court. While it failed in Congress, and in many ways turned many previously sympathetic Congressional Democrats against Roosevelt, it had the practical effect of goading the court, in 1937, to change course, ruling in favor of the New Deal in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (upholding federal minimum wage laws). Soon after, aged Justice William VandeVanter retired, and the court's approach to federal commerce regulation changed forever. Will the present Court change decades of Constitutional jurisprudence as states seek to nullify federal law? While I doubt it, it will be interesting.
The Republicans have lost a major fight. Since they never intended to vote for this thing anyway, imagine how much better this bill might have been, including a full-fledged public health insurance option, the right for the federal government to negotiate drug prices with Big Pharma, and other provisions that would have made this bill so much better. I am not saying this bill is horrible; I am only suggesting that the Democrats gave away a little too much for no good reason.
This may very well be as important in retrospect as Reagan's firing of the air traffic controllers in 1981.
