The working title for my column at The Week, which appeared late yesterday, wondered whether Barack Obama would have political severability from ObamaCare if the Supreme Court grabbed the case early and overturned the PPACA.  The editors made a wise change, because the impact of an early review ahead of the appellate courts may very well impact the direction of the 2012 elections, and not just for Obama, either.  If the Supreme Court gets to rule on the questions raised by district courts in Virginia and Florida before the elections, that has no political upside at all for Democrats — and a lot of downside:

An immediate grant of certiorari could mean a decision by this summer, while the trek through the appellate courts could postpone any final consideration of PPACA until 2013 or 2014, when the law comes fully into effect. Even if the Supreme Court waited until its next session to accept an expedited case, the decision would still come before the 2012 election. A Supreme Court ruling that supports the mandate still leaves President Obama and his Democratic allies with an unpopular bill under political siege in the Republican-controlled House, no worse or better off than before a final court ruling. Such a ruling might even provide more motivation to the opposition to gain control of the Senate and White House to reverse the PPACA entirely through legislative action.

An adverse ruling by the Supreme Court before the 2012 election would be an unequivocal disaster, however. President Obama and his fellow Democrats spent almost half of the 111th congressional session fiddling on health care while the economy burned, which destroyed their credibility in the midterm elections last fall. They insisted that their work would pass constitutional muster even as the mandate fueled the rise of the Tea Party and came to embody all of the arrogance and elitism of big-government, nanny-state. A ruling that overturns even just the mandate means that they tossed away their House majority and all of their political momentum for nothing.

What’s more, it will increase the prestige and the credibility of those who fought the passage of the PPACA and who later vowed to repeal it entirely and start reform over from scratch. And that could come just as President Obama runs for re-election and Democrats desperately try to preserve their Senate majority as they defend 13 more seats than Republicans. Not only would their work be discredited, so would their entire approach to governance.

It’s a relative long shot that the court will bypass the appellate levels to take the case, of course.  Deviating from the normal course of appeals requires there to be a situation where delay would mean irreversible damage, or issues of “imperative public importance” and “extraordinary constitutional moment.”  The challenge to ObamaCare covers all of these prerequisites; states have to start expanding Medicaid rolls, which will impose massive costs, as well as taxes kicking in this year on health-care related businesses.  The constitutional moment is obvious, and the continuance of the reorganization required by ObamaCare means that a quicker ruling will either prevent damage to the status quo or prevent damage to the reforms if the court upholds the law.

Still, it would take four justices to agree to an expedited appeal.  Virginia has already said that they will ask for such an expedited appeal, and when the government appeals the Florida ruling, the 26 other states joined in that suit will almost certainly ask as well.  If asked, one has to presume under the circumstances that the chance to head off a long, contradictory trek through different appellate circuits will appeal to at least the conservative end of the bench, especially since there is zero chance of avoiding the case in the long run anyway.  On the other hand, after Bush v Gore, the court may not be terribly anxious to get to that end game and be seen as conducting a political intervention.

If they decide to tackle the inevitable sooner rather than later, the White House and its Democratic allies will face two outcomes: either a fired-up electorate like in 2010, or massive egg on their faces and … a fired-up electorate.  There will be no severability from ObamaCare either way.