In the climactic scene of Star Wars (spoiler alert for those few who haven’t yet seen it), Luke Skywalker flies his Rebel X-wing fighter along a trench of the Imperial Death Star and, with one perfectly placed shot, hits a small exhaust port leading directly to the fortress’s main reactor—causing the Death Star to burst into a supernova.  When thinking about delaying Obamacare’s individual mandate, that image is worth keeping in mind.

For it’s not just that delaying the individual mandate is popular (a recent Rasmussen poll finds that Americans favor such a delay by a 30-point margin), an easy sell (President Obama lawlessly delayed the employer mandate, so why not lawfully delay the individual one?), a quick way to cut the deficit by more than $20 billion in 2014 alone (according to the Congressional Budget Office), and a “very reasonable and sensible” thing to do (to quote Democratic senator Joe Manchin, one of 23 Democratic members of Congress who’ve already publicly expressed support for the delay).  Indeed, it’s all of those things.  But, in two key veins—one psychological, the other functional—it’s also a way to pave the path to full repeal.