Why do I think independents will tilt slightly in favor of the court ruling and, in turn, the act now? Here we get to what matters to these voters. What matters to them is having one party check the other. Independents always, for example, want divided government. And they like it when one party checks the other. That’s what they want to see, so that each side’s excesses are curtailed by the other. To people with strong ideological commitments, this is dysfunction and paralysis, and the thing that pisses us all off to no end. To swing voters, it’s reassuring.
It’s therefore my hunch that even some people who didn’t like the mandate will think that this process, ugly as it all was, worked and settled things. Okay, the Democrats got all the power and went kinda nuts with their law. The Republicans had a point and a right to challenge it. But now it’s upheld. And John Roberts said so, for criminy sakes. The check was performed, right against left, judicial against executive, and Obama was vindicated. The fight is over. Let’s move on. That’s where I think most true swing voters will land. To perform one more mathematical slice—roughly 60 percent of the 7 percent.
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