The Majoritarian Difficulty, ACA Trooferism Edition
By I don’t think the impeachment campaign is going to go well:
For the second time this week, we have polling confirmation that about 3 out of 5 Americans approve of the Supreme Court’s decision in King v. Burwell last week. In findings that closely echo those of an earlier CNN/ORC survey, the Kaiser Family Foundation’s tracking poll on health issues showed approval by a 62/32 margin, with a nearly identical 61/34 margin among self-identified independents. Unlike the CNN/ORC poll, KFF’s also breaks down the reaction by general opinion on Obamacare, showing that 30% of ACA opponents still think it makes sense to offer the same assistance to people buying insurance under the law whether or not a state purchasing exchange was established.
This is one of the oddities of Ted Cruz calling for retention elections as a remedy to judgifying he doesn’t like. It’s a quite terrible idea in itself. But in this case, it’s funny that conservatives think that retention elections fought in the issues at the end of the term would work out in their favor. Obergefell is the even stronger case. As is often the case, the Court was siding with national public opinion majorities against regional outliers. In some cases, this means national public opinion trumping local public opinion; in other cases it means national and local public opinion trumping state legislators. But whatever one wants to say about the two decisions that have eroded the saliva supply of the nation’s conservatives, they’re not “countermajoritarian” when it comes to the national population.