I thought that was the point the article was positing; it's a symbolic vote to get Republicans on the record for their support of an unpopular position.
I think what people fail to realize is that it's not unpopular enough and not with the right people. For the GOP base, they may disagree wholeheartedly but what are they going to do? Vote for a abortionist gun-grabbing Democrat?
For Dems, the best use of these things is barrage the election cycle with negative news about the GOP. Failed policies, bad ideas, myopic leadership. Bad bad bad bad. Suck the energy right out the way the Clinton investigation did in 2016.
Reducing enthusiasm in the opposing party’s base is a key tactic in US elections, which are won at least as much by turnout of reliable votes as turning swing votes, however much the media prefers the swing voter narrative.
Unfortunately that voting block doesn't line up with reality, as least from the stats I know for the presidential elections. A given voter that voted for party X's candidate four years ago, if they vote again, will vote for party X's candidate about 92% of the time. This means that in the pool of 'likely voters', the two parties are realistically fighting over 8% of hearts and minds.
Voters who claim not to strongly identify with either party vote as consistently with one party as voters who do strongly identify with a party, at least, from research I saw several years back.
We've had net neutrality as official FCC policy with different enforcement mechanisms from 2005 until 2017. Being “CMU taught, Cambridge written” apparently doesn't stop the paper from being blatantly wrong and simple, easily verifiable facts.
Case-by-case application of the Open Internet principles from 2005-2010, Title I regulation from 2010-2014, Title II regulation from 2015-2017. The case-by-case approach was struck down by the courts in 2010 while the Title I regs were being drafted; the Title I regs being struck down in 2014 with a specific identification of Title II as the legal basis that would support the kind of rules the FCC adopted under Title I is what prompted the Title II regulations to be drafted.
> The cases of fraud or misrepresentation are just that.
The VoIP and BitTorrent blocking cases before the Title I regs were adopted weren't based on general fraud or misrepresentation principles, but on the FCCs publicly adopted Open Internet (net neutrality) principles.
For Dems, the best use of these things is barrage the election cycle with negative news about the GOP. Failed policies, bad ideas, myopic leadership. Bad bad bad bad. Suck the energy right out the way the Clinton investigation did in 2016.