President Obama has been having a pretty good week. Actually, to be perfectly accurate, President Obama's legacy has been having a pretty good week. At the end of all presidencies, everything they've achieved and failed to achieve is lumped together under this term, so that historians can debate about the president's legacy for decades to come. It's a normal part of the American cycle. This week, Obama won a preliminary victory in Congress and he just won a resounding court confirmation of his biggest legislative victory to date, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (which has become the eponymous "Obamacare"). Next week, the Supreme Court is expected to declare marriage equality for all, in every state. As I said, a pretty good week all around, legacy-wise.

In fact [warning: this paragraph is intended for regular readers of this column], if tomorrow was a working day for me, I would definitely be handing Obama the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award, without even really considering anyone else for the honor. This is a sideways method of reminding folks that I'll be on vacation both Friday and Monday, so while I will try to post some re-run columns for everyone to enjoy, original columns won't resume until next Tuesday. OK, end of program note -- and my apologies for just cramming it into the text like this.

The Supreme Court today handed down a stunning 6-3 decision upholding the entirety of the Obamacare law, including subsidies for everyone equally across America. The stunning part was not only that six justices voted for a commonsense reading of the law, but that the decision for the majority (written by Chief Justice John Roberts) was so strong in its legal reasoning. Many had assumed that the legal basis for upholding the law would come from what is called a Chevron precedent (from a previous case involving the company), where the court ruled that an agency (in the Obamacare case, the Internal Revenue Service) could interpret vague language in the laws that are written for them, because they pretty much have to do so in order to implement these laws. That wasn't the route Roberts took, however. Instead, he wrote an opinion which, as one court-watcher commented "reads like the government's brief" -- in other words, that accepts Obama's basic argument that the entire case was a silly waste of time. It took nine months for a conservative activist group to even find the apparent contradiction that the typo caused, so how could the intent have been what they claimed it was? If you read the whole law, it is patently obvious what the one badly-written clause was supposed to mean. This is the way Roberts ruled, and it should preclude a lot of other silly legal challenges to the law's text. It also means future (Republican) presidents won't be able to suddenly direct the I.R.S. to "interpret" the clause any differently -- because Roberts yanked the rug out from trying to do so. The ruling is clear: there will be one interpretation of this clause, and it is exactly what Obama and the Democrats have claimed all along. Period.

Obama's happiness at the ruling was evident in his Rose Garden statement after the news broke. Obamacare is indeed here to stay, and now a part of American life. Any Republican who argues otherwise is now going to have to come up with a solid plan that covers just as many people, which certainly hasn't happened yet (five years later, and counting) and isn't likely to appear on the horizon any time soon. Republicans will rant and rave about Obamacare for years to come (some still rant and rave over Social Security, decades after the fact), but Obamacare will still be there while they do. Sooner or later, Republicans may actually join with Democrats in fixing any parts of the law which aren't working as well as designed, without also trying to kill the entire program off. I don't see this happening any time soon, but stranger things have happened in the world of politics.

The number of people who have benefited from Obamacare is over ten million and climbing. Obamacare has drastically shrunk the percentage of Americans who have no health insurance, and this number is likely to shrink even further in the next two years (eventually, it'll flatten out at a new low). It's gone from 18 percent of the population to less than 12 percent already, and it'll likely be in single digits after next year's open enrollment period. The costs of healthcare are rising at the slowest level since the 1950s. Any Republican so-called "replacement plan" will have to directly compete with those statistics.

So Obama was certainly entitled to his victory lap in the Rose Garden today. He'll likely be taking another one on Monday, when the court's final decisions of the judicial year are expected, and when the marriage equality case's decision will be made public. While the Obamacare decision is an easy one for Republican presidential candidates to rant and rail against, the gay marriage decision is going to be a lot more problematic for them. Watch the rhetoric next week, and see whether the ever-expanding field of Republican candidates includes some statements that are at the extremes. Watch for any Republican who urges their party to just "move on" from the issue get excoriated by the others for "surrendering."

Obamacare and the equality of gay people are two of the biggest achievements in Obama's legacy, to be long remembered by history. The trade issue will also likely be remembered, although whether it will be entered on the positive or negative side of the legacy's ledger remains to be seen. Bill Clinton is remembered for NAFTA, but not in all that positive a light, to give just one past example. Obama is pushing hard to get his Trans-Pacific Partnership deal through, and he just cleared an enormous hurdle this week in Congress by getting the fast-track authority bill through. This has annoyed many in his own party, and is a rare instance of Obama passing legislation on his agenda with mostly Republican support. But if he gets the deal through, he will ultimately be remembered for it, for better or for worse. It will be one of his signature achievements in Congress during his term as president, either way.

Obama's legacy is currently being more clearly defined. Losing the Obamacare case would have been a tremendous blow to that legacy. But there are two other issues which have yet to be finalized. The first, as mentioned, is the marriage equality decision from the Supreme Court. The second, with a fast-approaching deadline at the end of the month, is the negotiations with Iran over curtailing their nuclear activities. The chances for reaching a deal, at present, don't look all that good. The Iranians are sticking to a few positions which are truly deal-breakers for America. But then the negotiations always get the fiercest right before deadlines, so we'll see what happens. No deal may be reached, which wouldn't exactly tarnish Obama's legacy (he did make the effort to try to get a deal, after all). A bad deal could be reached, which would actually tarnish Obama's legacy if Iran was caught cheating in any way at some future date. Or a good deal could emerge, which would obviously be a good thing for Obama's legacy. We'll see where it all goes in the next few weeks.

This June will be remembered as an important month when historians consider Obama's legacy, that much is for certain. He won a big fight in Congress over fast-track trade authority -- which incidentally extends this power for six years (through the next president's first term, in other words). He won a big fight in the Supreme Court over the law which now popularly bears his own name. If the high court rules for marriage equality for all, as most expect it to do, this will not be as a direct result from anything the president did on gay rights -- but it's hard to see Obama not going down in history as the best president gay people have ever had, in general. When you compare America when Obama took office and where we'll be when he leaves office -- on gay rights in particular -- Obama will easily stand head and shoulders above the rest. If he can actually get a good and verifiable deal with Iran, it could have wide repercussions to the entire Middle East situation (again, for better or for worse).

Obama's still got lots to do as president. He's got a year and a half more to go in the Oval Office. Big things will get decided during that time. And, of course, he's got over six years of achievements already. But when we all look back on his legacy as a whole, a lot of it will be centered around this very short period of time.

Maybe (again, if I weren't going to play hooky tomorrow) I would have given the award to "President Obama's legacy." Because Obama's legacy certainly is having a big week.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant