HOUSE DEMOCRATS TO CITIES: DROP DEAD!

The Republican Party has built its national dominance on two main institutional bases: corporate business and conservative churches. Republican leaders never miss an opportunity to defend the interests and increase the reach and power of these two key bases. When they're under attack, Republicans defend them; when they're in conflict, the party works to reconcile them. In elections the Republicans "move to the middle" by packaging corporate and conservative church interests for mainstream consumption (low taxes and no regulation equals growth, "school choice" equals education reform).

The Democratic Party also depends on two main institutional bases: the labor movement and cities. But unlike the GOP, national Democrats seldom miss an opportunity to abandon and weaken their bases of support.

Case in point: Last Thursday's U.S. House vote on national franchising of video/Internet providers (the COPE Act).

At its core, the COPE Act has a simple purpose -- to strip local communities of any vestige of influence over commercial cable and IPTV development on their public rights-of-way.

This bill is not "about net neutrality". Of course it's part of the grand AT&T/Verizon strategy to grab a dominant position in the network infrastructure market and use that position to make money by shaping network content of all kinds, including Internet commerce. Of course this strategy poses a threat to the open Internet that needs to be countered, by putting NN requirements back into Federal law among other things.

But the telcos (and Big Cable) don't need the COPE Act to give them Federal permission to create tiered Internet service and screw nonpreferred content providers. They're free to do that right now, under existing law. What they need the COPE Act for is to stop uppity local governments -- and people who can influence them, like consumer groups and local ISPs and content providers and digital inclusion advocates -- from messing with their converged, bundled, our-pipes-our-content business model in local markets.

So the vote last Thursday wasn't primarily a choice between AT&T and Google, or AT&T and craigslist. It was a choice between AT&T and the power of local communities: power to help make the New Media rules, and to get a piece of the action for community needs.

So of course the Democratic majority voted for AT&T against local communities -- abandoning the interests of the cities that support them and further weakening a vital Democratic base, urban governments.

(No, this was not a Hobson's choice between the cities and the unions, as Seth Rosen of the Communications Workers made clear in a comment here last week.)

But wait, you say... didn't the majority of Democrats support the Markey net neutrality amendment? And didn't they vote for Congresswoman Solis' motion to recommit the bill to committee, showing their displeasure with its lack of serious redlining protections for "low value" communities?

Sure they did. Democrats voted for the Markey Amendment 140 to 58. Then they voted for the Solis "recommit" motion 162 to 36. Very strong. Very stirring. And very meaningless, since neither measure had the faintest hope of passage, with the GOP majority holding its votes on a very tight leash.

Then they had the real vote.

Democrats voting to take away municipal franchising powers, with no significant change on either net neutrality or anti-redlining protection: 106. Voting against: 92.

Bottom line: House Democrats to the cities... drop dead!

Ironically, the national city officials' organizations, led by the League of Cities and the Conference of Mayors, seem to have made some real headway dealing with Republican leaders on the Senate side. Senator Ted Stevens' revised S 2686, released Friday in preparation for Commerce Committee hearings that start today, reduces cities' discretion in video franchising but still keeps them in charge of the process, preserving some local leverage over franchise lengths and fees, consumer complaints and right-of-way enforcement, and protecting their public and government access resources. These are issues that House Democrats didn't even try to raise.