Whether you like the ACA or not, the question of its constitutionality is a litmus test for the current health of our republic. They will try to buy you off with Prop 8. Watch.
I'm not as pessimistic as some about the fate of the ACA in the Supreme Court. Relying on how oral arguments go is a fool's game. But, then again, so is relying on Justice Scalia's supposed "principles."
What is clear to anyone paying attention in my life time is that: (1) (a) Democratic presidents are never legitimate, no matter what they do (booming Clinton economy, killing Osama Bin Laden, ACORN, blowjobs, etc.) (b) whereas Republican presidents are always legitimate, regardless of what they do (Iraq war fraud) (2) Republican actions are ex post facto legal regardless of whether they are Constitutional (Iran-Contra, warrantless wiretapping, etc.) while Democratic actions are unconstitutional at the pleasure of the right and regardless of whether they were formerly infallible Republican actions (like the individual mandate). (3) (a) Liberal judges enforcing the Constitution are "activists"; Republicans inventing new law to advance political agendas is "originalism." (including potentially striking down the ACA, Citizens United, and placing Bush in the White House).
So, of course the ACA is unconstitutional in that sense. All Democratic legislation signed by a Democratic "president" is. To act as if these aren't the rules in the mind of the right-wing, from the shitkicking AM listener at home to the highest echelons in all three branches of government is a delusion we cannot afford.
If the ACA is struck down, even in part, you can count on the Supreme Court taking an ever increasing number of laws and striking them down in a new Lochner era. In that phase of Constitutional development, state laws regulating the economy were unconstitutional for one reason, and federal laws for another.
Don't be surprised if the Court also finds Massachusetts's individual mandate unconstitutional as well in the short term. So, any hope that we can find relief in the states is probably futile as well.
It won't take nearly as much creativity to find a way to preserve Social Security on the one hand and strike down single payer in Vermont as it did to invent this theory that the individual mandate is somehow unconstitutional, but it's ok to stop people from growing a plant of weed in their attic that they never intend to sell.
How anyone could preserve a faith in this institution to act judiciously after Bush v. Gore escapes me, yet people were shocked at Citizens United.
And any of you that don't work your butt off to keep Obama in office to nominate these people are complicit in this farce.
Oh, and one more thing. If they do this, if they strike down the ACA, I bet they will find a way to preserve the 9th's ruling in the Prop 8 case or even go national with it to game your support. Don't think these men don't also consider the institutional importance of these decisions. Maybe it will be the other way around. Who knows. But none of it will have to do with what's justice, what's constitutional, or, god forbid, what the people's representatives enacted.