Five Pundits Who Confidently Predicted The Obamacare Ruling And Got It Wrong

By Annie-Rose Strasser/Think Progress

Over the last few weeks, nearly every pundit in the U.S. took a guess at whether the Affordable Care Act would be upheld, overturned, or cobbled back together in some new fashion. Many — if not most — of those guesses were wrong.

But some pundits in particular should be cutting a big slice of humble pie as progressives celebrate Obamacare being held up in full. Here they are:

1. Bill O’Reilly: On his show on FOX News, O’Reilly predicted that the law would be struck down: “It’s going to be five-to-four. And, if I’m wrong, I will come on and I will… apologize for being an idiot.”

Watch it:

2. CNN Contributor Jeffrey Toobin: Toobin came out immediately after the arguments and said, “This was a train wreck for the Obama Administration. This law looks like it’s going to be struck down. I’m telling you, all of the predictions, including mine, that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong.” Toobin admitted he was wrong today, but he was right about one thing: “The only conservative Justice who looked like he might uphold the law was Chief Justice Roberts, who asked hard questions of both sides.”

Watch his ‘train wreck’ flub:

3. The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky: “This is easy. I take the darkest and most cynical possible view of the conservative majority. …That means overturning the mandate 5-4. But it means doing so narrowly, carefully, almost regretfully. In other words, they want more than anything else not to rile up liberals.”

4. National Review’s Ed Whelan: “[T]he fact that Justice Scalia read his dissent from the bench in the Arizona immigration case leads me to believe that the Court will invalidate the individual mandate by a 5-4 vote.”

5. Dana Perino, former Bush spokesperson: “I do think that it is going to lose and I’ll tell you why. This past weekend, Justice Ginsburg…in public comments said to expect sharp disagreements when the decision comes out. To me, that means it’s either a 6-3 or a 5-4 decision against Obamacare, and I don’t know if that means that the whole thing will be overturned or they’ll try to split it.”

Watch it: