What if Supreme Court strikes down health care law ?

A friend comments:

"For Democrats, it’s the sort of transformational, going big-ness that drew them to Obama in the first place."

Strongly disagree. Here's the thing you're overlooking, Chris. You're characterizing Democrats as acting monolithically, like Republicans.

That is your slight error here.

The fact is one of the reasons the health care plan is so unpopular is that it roughly split Democrats in two, many of whom were extremely peeved by Obama's caving to pharmaceutical companies and not pushing for a public mandate while selling out to the private health care industry.

None other than Keith Olbermann was extremely opposed to the individual mandate, threatening civil disobedience should it pass.

So, when you look at what might happen if the Supreme Court strikes down the individual mandate, you are looking at something that many Democrats strongly oppose as well.

Also, you should try to analyze how will President Obama himself react? As a Constitutional scholar, he has his own ideas about how to interpret the Constitution. Will he not accept the ruling of the Roberts court on health care, the ruling of the court whose Chief Justice he opposed partly out of concern about how that Chief Justice might interpret the Commerce Clause (read Obama's floor remarks when he opposed Roberts)?

Let's suppose president / presidential candidate Obama accepts the ruling against the individual mandate, should that happen. It could mean president Obama will re-introduce the idea of a public option as a way to extend health care coverage. This could have the effect of rallying disillusioned Democrats back to his side.