Net Neutrality, PCCC & the First Law of Holes

The PCCC's handling of its own 0-95 net neutrality record in the mid-term election is a political case study of what happens when one ignores The First Law of Holes: When in a hole, stop digging.

Even though the PCCC has no one else to blame for digging itself into a big hole by mass emailing their list of 95 candidates who pledged support for net neutrality to reporters and bloggers prior to the election, the PCCC appears intent on continuing to dig their political hole deeper.

• Not only did the PCCC go 0-95 in their own NN campaign, the PCCC then fed their own negative news cycle by launching a shoot-the-messenger, ad hominem media campaign against me personally. They called me not "sane" and a "shill" publicly, and called me "intellectually dishonest" in a mass private email to the media -- all for the audacity of holding them publicly accountable for their own public claims.
  • Ad hominem attacks are the well known refuge of those who know the facts are not on their side.
• The PCCC is digging itself even deeper into its political hole by trying to shift the discussion to a separate, but related subject of how FreePress/PCCC/Moveon.org want the FCC to regulate the Internet as a telephone monopoly.
• Since the PCCC dredged up the Title II reclassification issue by trumpeting that 27 of 72 Democrats who signed a letter to the FCC opposing Title II reclassification lost in the election and all 32 that signed a letter in favor of Title II reclassification all won re-election, it is now fair game to hold the PCCC accountable again for their latest public claims.
  • What the PCCC did not say was that the score in the dueling letters to the FCC on Title II was that ~299 members of Congress opposed Internet regulation and only ~49 were supportive of the FCC regulating the Internet -- that's a 6-1 political ratio against the PCCC's position.
    • The PCCC's hole gets even deeper.
    • The PCCC, in focusing on the election's result on Title II, everyone knows the election added ~60 House and 6 Senate Republicans, and given that 99% of Republicans last Congress formally opposed Title II regulation of the Internet, it is fair to assume that relative opposition to the PCCC's Title II position increased from 6-1 against to 7-1 against.
• What's really interesting is that in furiously digging their hole deeper, the PCCC appears to have hit a new sinkhole within its hole, plummeting themselves even deeper into the hole they dug for themselves.
  • We learn today from the Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) that all 24 candidates (14 incumbents and 10 challengers) that responded to their pre-election Candidate Issues Survey opposed net neutrality and all 24 won.
    • Now we have a CFIF 24-0 proxy vote against net neutrality to confirm the PCCC's 0-95 proxy vote for net neutrality, in addition to a Hart public opinion poll that 75% of Americans believe the Internet is working well and 55% oppose Government regulation of the Internet.
  • This all adds credence to my pre-election assessment that apparently got this brouhaha started that FreePress/PCCC/Moveon.org have all over-represented the amount of political and popular support there is for mandated net neutrality, open Internet regulations, or Title II regulation of the Internet.

In sum, the PCCC's handling of the net neutrality issue in this election cycle is a quintessential political case study in how not to promote one's political cause.

• First, never trumpet facts or a list that overwhelmingly disproves one's key political premise.
• Second, never dredge up past losses to remind people how badly one did before.
• And finally, never create and feed a news cycle that exposes one's own incompetence and political weakness.

The First Law of Holes is when in a hole, stop digging.

The Second Law of Holes is when digging a deeper hole don't tell the media the view is getting better...