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Comment by padobson | Hacker News Reader

I hope no one is getting excited about this.

President Obama is a lame duck. His party just got tossed out of the Senate, relegating his political capital to basically 0. In the wake of this, he's decided to take maybe the most important economic issue of the next 20 years and politicize it.

Neither the red team nor the blue team could say they owned this issue, but one of the most divisive voices in politics just stuck the blue flag in it - at a time when he has less influence over policy than any other time in his presidency.

I would have preferred him to just keep his mouth shut.

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Agreed. Given the knee-jerk reaction of "Anything that Obama supports is bad", Ted Cruz is now tarring this as "Net Neutrality is the Obamacare of the Internet". I like how "Obamacare" has become the new Communism. A lot of people know hardly anything about it or what it's policies actually are, but it's baaaaad.

I like the Digg headline about this: Ted Cruz is the Uber for stupid metaphors.

> Ted Cruz is now tarring this as "Net Neutrality is the Obamacare of the Internet".

That is disastrous. If the Republicans unite against Net Neutrality just because Obama supports it, we could easily get a Republican president in the next election, and then the Internet in the U.S. will be doomed for a very long time.

I agree. Net Neutrality is a great opportunity for some bi-partisan problem solving. It'd be much better for the country if they could find common ground on this issue.

> If the Republicans unite against Net Neutrality just because Obama supports it

The Republicans have been generally against Net Neutrality since before Obama became President. (Bills on the issue first started being submitted in 2006.)

That makes little sense - what is the connection between Net Neutrality and Republicans winning in 2016? As issues go, this is a pretty minor one - economics, healthcare, immigration and foreign policy are way ahead. About 99% of the population don't even know what net neutrality is about, and of those who know what the words mean majority probably don't know enough about how ISPs and network interconnections work to make informed opinion about it (I have read a lot about it and I am still not sure if it's a good idea or not). Internet is not doomed either way, sky is not falling, please do not drink the Kool-Aid. As for Republicans, they are traditionally opposed to many measures expanding government regulatory power, so claiming they oppose it just because Obama is for it is plain wrong.

Sure would be fucking nice if they (democrats and republicans) could not have to take opposing sides on fucking everything, but you're right. Since he's for it, they're going to rally against it. Really disappointing.

That's the government working "for the people".

> Sure would be fucking nice if they (democrats and republicans) could not have to take opposing sides on fucking everything

There is a selection bias in the issues you speak of. Non-polarizing topics are handled swiftly, without much attention from the public spotlight. There is no point in discussing what's already agreed upon, and that's one of the more reasonable justifications of political polarization.

That said, the polarization is greater than would be optimal, so I do agree - it would be nice.

He still has 2 years to work on legacy and narcissism[1], he still has the Executive Order power which he's shown a keen interest in using, "net neutrality" is low-hanging fruit for him to boost his popularity, and there's still enough tacit supporters in Congress to get supporting legislation thru. There's going to be a whole lotta bills reaching his desk that he won't like; now's the time to start trying to drive the agenda & process toward maximizing favorable ones so he doesn't end up with the "roadblock" label.

[1] - you don't get to that level of power without substantial self-confidence and the desire for general adulation.

> In the wake of this, he's decided to take maybe the most important economic issue of the next 20 years and politicize it.

Obama campaigned on net neutrality and has been talking about it throughout his presidency. This is nothing new.

I don't disagree that it might have been better if he had said nothing - but I suspect the current antigovernment sentiment would have applied regardless of what Obama said.

You are saying that Obama is wrong because he is doing the right thing at a time when he will be defeats by forces that are willing to harm their constituents out of pure spite, and instead we should wait for those spiteful villains to decide to the right thing when it will serve their own selfish goals? That's sick.

Amen. This will make the issue more political, even though Rs and more Friedman-minded Ds should be behind net neutrality. Now Rs will be driven toward the other side.

A lame duck occurs after the new President has been elected, but before he has been sworn in. Obama will not be a lame duck for two years.

First, I believe we are all on the same team here.

Second, in-action on the part of any president is unacceptable. Presidencies are measured by the amount of positive change they can bring.

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