“the president expressed confidence that the Court would “not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”
I believe he meant “Democrats elected to Congress.THAT in fact is what is unprecedented. No single major piece of legislation in the past century has been enacted on a pure party line vote, especially in the face of a persistent majority of the public in opposition. The Constitution and all its checks and balances were designed to protect the rights of minorities against the tyranny of a majority, but also the reverse.
The 2010 Congress was the most liberal since 1965-66. Obama exploited a very rare moment in which progressives had a temporary lock on the reins of power and rammed through a highly unpopular piece of legislation. He didn’t care whether it was constitutional: he was achieving a century-old progressive dream. So what he did as president literally was unprecedented. SCOTUS, OTOH, has on occasion overturned major pieces of legislation; that’s not unprecedented: that’s their job! For Obama to claim this is unprecedented shows how poor a constitutional scholar he is (either that, or he’s merely a flagrant liar: take your choice).
They are not mutually exclusive.