If President Obama wanted to claim it, he could argue that this legal victory gives him back some of his 2008 mojo. When he signed the law in March of 2010, Obama made broad claims for it…

The president echoed some of that sentiment Thursday after the ruling. “It should be pretty clear by now that I didn’t do this because it was good politics,” he said in the East Room of the White House, where he had signed the legislation two years earlier. “I did it because I believed it was good for the country. I did it because I believed it was good for the American people.” The president mentioned politics 10 times in the short speech, always putting himself at arm’s length from that dirty business. You may remember that was his posture in the 2008 campaign. He then launched into a story, as he did so effectively as a candidate, explaining how he carried with him the letter of a woman named Natoma Canfield who was driven to drop coverage because it was too expensive.

And now that he’s said this, he’s going to move on from this issue. Fast. “What we won’t do—what the country can’t afford to do—is refight the political battles of two years ago or go back to the way things were,” said Obama. The president once said he welcomed a fight over health care, but he doesn’t want one now. Obama aides expect and hope that Republicans will want to make the election a fight over health care, but their view is that the country does not want to go through a health care fight again. They compare the situation to the contentious Bush v. Gore ruling; liberals wanted to fight another round, but the country wanted to move on.