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Paul Moreno in The Wall Street Journal on running against the courts President Obama's preemptive warning to the Supreme Court not to overturn his health care law puts him in a losing tradition. "President Obama is ignoring a lesson liberals and progressives should have learned long ago. None has ever succeeded in galvanizing popular opinion against the courts. In American politics, the goal is not to curb the judiciary but to co-opt it," writes Moreno. Beginning with turn-of-the-century progressives, Moreno details all the instances where presidents or candidates ran against the Supreme Court and subsequently lost elections. FDR initially made the same mistake with his court-packing scheme, but he eventually won out when he stayed in office long enough to appoint eight justices "the old fashioned way." "A decision striking down ObamaCare will not be, as Lincoln called Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), 'an astonisher in legal history' ... A wise progressive would welcome such a decision, respect the court, and then pack it."
David Brooks in The New York Times on America's two economies Brooks highlights an article by Tyler Cowen in The American Interest, which argues that America may be on the verge of an export boom, fueled by newly efficient business models. "His work leaves the impression that there are two interrelated American economies. On the one hand, there is the globalized tradable sector — companies that have to compete with everybody everywhere ... On the other hand, there is a large sector of the economy that does not face this global competition — health care, education and government." The economies are growing apart. The first economy, Brooks says, is pressured to become efficient and dynamic, and it often attracts Republicans. The second provides more jobs but isn't as competitive, and it attracts more Democrats. He writes, "I don't know which coalition will gain the upper hand. But I do think today’s arguments are rooted in growing structural rifts."