Why Dems were desperate for Obamacare

It doesn't appear the Obama administration and its allies ever thought the constitutional challenges to Obamacare would get this far. Surprise to Democrats! There is a third branch of government. It's called the Supreme Court.

No one knows how the Court will rule, although it's clear that Democrats have gone into panic mode because they weren't prepared for the Supremes to actually take the constitutional issues seriously. They were also not prepared for Solicitor General Donald Verilli to be unable to pull a rabbit out of a hat and make the administration's case look good.

Now the Democrats are as desperate to save Obamacare as they were to pass it in the first place. And if you think back, you'll recall that they were very desperate indeed – so desperate, you have to ask yourself why.

Remember, this is not a bunch that has generally shown a lot of political courage. Look at all the things Democrats didn't do in 2009 when they had the White House, the House and a 60-seat majority in the Senate. For all their talk about how the Bush tax cuts caused the deficit, they didn't repeal them, because maybe they realized that doing so could have pushed the economy into an early depression.

For all their bluster about closing Guantanamo Bay, they didn't do it. Why? They had not figured out where they were going to put the prisoners. For all their denunciations of the Iraq War, they followed the Bush strategy to a T (which is why we won), and even today, they're keeping troops there.

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The Democrats are so politically risk-averse, they haven't even passed a budget since 2009!

But on one issue, the passage of Obamacare, nothing would stop them. Recall:

• The bill was so unpopular, they held the vote in the middle of the night, and before most members of Congress, if any, read the bill.

• When they had trouble rounding up the votes they needed, they started to buy votes in the bright light of day – from the Cornhusker Kickback that got Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson in line, to promises about abortion that brought Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak on board. The Democrats were so determined, they didn't even care that we knew they were buying votes!

• When they could no longer pass a conference committee report because they lost one of their Massachusetts Senate seats with the election of Scott Brown, they got really creative – persuading House Democrats to pass the Senate version without changes so the president could sign the Senate version into law, which he did – then abusing reconciliation rules to change it later.

• It didn't matter how much the public hated the bill. It didn't matter how many rules they had to break. It didn't matter who they had to bribe. And it sure didn't matter that the whole thing was completely unconstitutional. They were going to pass it, no matter what!

Even though the Democrats wouldn't take the political risk of passing a budget, they would set themselves up for a bloodbath in the midterm elections to get this thing on the books? Many Democrats were not re-elected to Congress after they "walked the plank" for Obama on Obamacare. They learned that their voting constituency was not as stupid as they thought.

How did this get to be such a pass-it-or-bust priority?

Consider: Democrats have been trying to pass national health care since at least the 1950s. In fact, the same Democratic congressman – John Dingell of Michigan – has introduced a bill to that effect every year since then. (Some of these people refuse to retire!) They have wanted to do this that badly, for that long, because they understand that when they control health care, there are really no limits to their power. Health care is the one thing everyone will need at some point, but no one can entirely control when they need it. So when the day comes that you do need health care, you're entirely at the mercy of the entity that controls it.

If that's the federal government, run by Democrats, then you're completely at the mercy of them. In a political environment where government runs health care, and political battles center on who will best deliver the goodies while making someone else pay for it – Democrats will win every time. Government health care is their dream come true.

So when they found themselves with control of Congress and the White House – so much control that even a Republican filibuster couldn't stop them from taking over health care, as it did in 1994 – they realized it was a chance that might never come again. When would be the next time they would have 60 Senate seats and a left-wing president as extreme as Obama?

It was a now-or-never proposition they couldn't let slip away.

And they were right. If Obamacare stands, the fundamental relationship between the federal government and the citizens of this nation will be forever altered. We will rely on Washington for our very lives. Self-reliance and fiscal responsibility will be things of the past.

The only thing they didn't count on was a Supreme Court that, unlike them, actually takes the limits of federal power seriously. Or so we hope, because it might be our last chance.