Should President Obama run against the Supreme Court over Obamacare?

Should President Obama run against the Supreme Court over Obamacare?:

U.S. Supreme Court, Wikimedia Commons

With the Supreme Court potentially poised to make yet another conservative, activist, legislating-from-the-bench kind of decision to rival Bush v. Gore and Citizens United, at least one prominent Democrat thinks it's time for President Obama to take the court on politically if it strikes the law down.

WASHINGTON -- [T]here are those who think the president could do well by squarely targeting the Supreme Court, accusing the justices of rank partisanship and judicial activism. On Monday morning, Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), a member of House Democratic leadership, joined that camp.
"Well, in terms of the Congress, I believe that it would be off base for us to [go after the Court]," he said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "But for the president, I don't think it is. I think the president ought to take a look at what went on in the years before. We have seen presidents run against Congress and we have seen presidents run against the Supreme Court. Franklin Roosevelt did it to the Supreme Court; Truman did it to the Congress. I think that the president would take a look at exactly what he needs to do to connect with the American people. Let them know he has done everything that he can possibly do. And ask them to give him a mandate for the years going forward."

It wouldn't actually break precedent for Obama to criticize the court; he did so in a state of the union address, saying that the Citizens United decision would "open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign companies—to spend without limit in our elections." A decision to overturn the Affordable Care Act would be just as radical as Citizens United, and would certainly merit some attention from Obama, at the very least.
Going after the Court politically could actually find some resonance in the electorate. Remember that polling has found the electorate deeply cynical about the court, with a whopping 59 percent of respondents in this Kaiser Family Foundation poll saying that the court would rule in the ACA case not on the constitutional merits of the law, but on their own ideology.
The activist, conservative Roberts court makes as compelling a rationale for the reelection of President Obama as any other issue. You need look no further than the Republican primary and the tens of millions a few dozen individuals to see the results of Citizens United.
The result of a decision to overturn the Affordable Care Act would be even more radical, it would literally be life and death for millions of Americans. That's certainly worth President Obama campaigning on.