Not only did the Government win, but it won on an argument (that the mandate falls within Congress's taxing power) that many commentators on the left were urging the Government to drop, given that every single lower court judge (other than arguably Judge Wynn of the Fourth Circuit) had rejected it. General Verrilli deserves some apologies, I think.
Moreover, folks like Paul Clement, Randy Barnett, and Michael Carvin deserve a great deal of credit for getting the Court essentially to adopt their commerce power argument. Almost no one thought that possible--even if they believed the argument was right as a matter of constitutional law--27 months ago.
