Now that we know (almost) for sure that the Supreme Court will hand down its Affordable Care Act ruling Thursday, my hunch is that reporters, pundits, politicians, and everyone else with a real or imagined stake in the outcome will ramp up the handicapping. That’s only natural.
But if it’s making your blood pressure spike, take solace in the fact that it’s really all guesswork. At best these are plausible theories built around one of the infinite interpretations of the case’s written and oral arguments. At worst, they’re blindly tossed darts.
Unfortunately, it often ventures from handicapping into the realm of mind reading. So don’t agonize over anything you hear or read suggesting that today’s immigration decision — the ruling itself, the fact that Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, Scalia’s angry dissent — implies anything at all about the health care challenge. It’s snake oil.
This isn’t to disparage anyone in particular or in general. People who work in or write about politics spend a lot of time examining incentives and communications strategies and the psychologies of powerful people. It’s good that they do, and many do it very well. But applying that expertise to what we know about John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy’s ultimate legal interpretations of the health care law, or how they plan to structure the ruling — i.e. nothing at all — by definition can’t yield anything conclusive. My advice: ignore anything that purports otherwise.
