In the past few days, I’ve talked about two dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal gam­bles. Today I’ll talk about a third.

This week, the Obama admin­is­tra­tion opted not to appeal last month’s 11th Cir­cuit PPACA rul­ing, which con­cluded that the indi­vid­ual man­date is uncon­sti­tu­tional. Given that Obama’s posi­tion is, obvi­ously, that the man­date is con­sti­tu­tional, why not appeal the decision?

Sim­ply put, because this forces the Supreme Court’s hand.

The PPACA is writ­ten to apply to all Amer­i­cans, and there­fore needs a national legal con­sen­sus on its applic­a­bil­ity and con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity. But right now, we have a dif­fer­ence between regions. The 6th Cir­cuit, in a 2–1 deci­sion, upheld the man­date, while the 11th, also in a 2–1 deci­sion, struck it down. This means that, as it stands, the man­date is legal within the states of Michi­gan, Ohio, Ken­tucky, and Ten­nessee, but ille­gal in Alabama, Geor­gia, and Florida.

This sit­u­a­tion, nat­u­rally, can­not remain. The law is either con­sti­tu­tional in all states, or uncon­sti­tu­tional in all states. By leav­ing this con­tra­dic­tion in place, the Obama admin­is­tra­tion is forc­ing the Supreme Court to do some­thing, and do some­thing now. This means a deci­sion to be issued (most likely) in the spring of 2012.

The Deciders

Why does Obama want this issue decided next spring, just as the elec­tion cam­paigns will be ramp­ing up in force? Because this will take the issue off the table. If the Supreme Court finds the law con­sti­tu­tional, no longer will he have to defend the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity of the law.

And even if the Supremes do not, it will almost cer­tainly be a deci­sion along party lines, giv­ing Obama rea­son to point to the par­ti­san nature of the Supreme Court. That may not be as strong a posi­tion, but it removes a lot of slip­per­i­ness that he is forced to deal with today in dis­cussing the law. And it’s not as weak an argu­ment as you might think. Wit­ness how the pub­lic responded to the Cit­i­zens United deci­sion. It’s not nec­es­sar­ily a win-​​lose proposition.

The Supreme Court has an out, for now. The Jus­tices can con­clude that the plain­tiffs lack stand­ing, given that the indi­vid­ual man­date has not yet taken effect. Con­gress has the oppor­tu­nity to repeal that por­tion of the law with­out it ever affect­ing a sin­gle Amer­i­can, which may ren­der that por­tion of the law moot.

But even if the Supremes opt for dodg­ing the bul­let, Obama can come out out ahead. If the Supreme Court says the law is no big deal, why should the rest of us freak out about it?

So it looks like the Obama admin­is­tra­tion is bet­ting that the pos­si­ble out­comes range from neu­tral to pos­i­tive. They may be right.