I think Obama’s plan is the actual right thing, though, and that throwing his weight behind reclassification both shows and shapes its shift from “nuclear option” to politically viable. Wheeler says he thinks that Obama’s plan is “simplistic” and “naive”— that the President doesn’t get how they have to work with the broadband industry to get anything done. But there’s good reason to worry less about convoluted compromises and just make the bold move that needs to be made.

I think the public pressure has made strong net neutrality (including reclassification) a winning political issue, therefore, providing incentives to actually push things in the right direction. I think Obama wants to keep that campaign promise for net neutrality and figures that, after the huge midterm defeat, he has little left to lose— so if you’re gonna go, go all out. That is, the Republican Congress is going to throw a fit over any Open Internet rules the FCC passes (even weak “baby splitting” ones), probably turning those “kill the FCC!” House resolutions into actual bills that make it through the Senate and onto Obama’s desk, which he figures he can then make a big spectacle out of vetoing and fire up the young tech-savvy progressives the Democrats need to actually show up at the polls in 2016. I think Wheeler ought to take a similar approach— Verizon (at the least) is going to sue no matter what he does, so he may as well just go with a common carriage approach that gives stronger legal authority and works closer to net neutrality anyway.