A funny thing happens when a court delivers a decision liberals do not like.
The latest example comes from the Texas federal court ruling striking down Obamacare, where Judge Reed O'Connor ruled the individual mandate is unconstitutional.
Democracy itself is now under attack. The court ruling became "controversial," an "assault on logic," "lawless," and a "bridge too far." The courts have been "weaponized."
CNN ran an editorial calling the order a "bomb dropped on America's health care system." Vox said, "The latest Obamacare ruling is part of a larger conservative attack on democracy." But they didn't stop there. The decision will "inflict untold physical, emotional, and financial harm on some of the most vulnerable people in the country," Vox said. It's nice they care.
The media don't always have such dire reactions to court opinions.
The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus was given "the most hopeful sign yet" during the Trump era after the notoriously liberal Ninth Circuit Court ruled against the Trump administration on an immigration order in February 2017.
Democracy was saved from "rotting from inside," said CNN's Brian Stelter, simply by a court order restoring Jim Acosta's White House press pass.
The media applauded when the Ninth Circuit predictably ruled against the president's travel ban as a "setback for Trump." When the travel ban was ultimately upheld by the highest court in the land, it was seen as a defection of the courts for not "seeing threats to democracy in real time."
This is not a new phenomenon, of course. The New York Times editorial board reacted to the Citizens United ruling in 2010 with the headline: "The Court's Blow to Democracy."
Viewing campaign contributions as an expression of free speech, according to the Times, "threatens democracy" and was "disastrous" and "radical."
But when the Court decided, also in a narrow 5 to 4 decision, to legalize gay marriage in 2015, the Court was again "profound" and back to delivering "justice."
To be fair, democracy doesn't just die via court rulings that liberals don't like. Democracy has been constantly dying since roughly November 9, 2016.