With midterm elections six months away, candidates are looking for innovative ways to define their campaigns. With an unemployment rate below 4 percent and recent upward revisions to the 2018 economic outlook, Republicans are preparing to campaign on a strong economy and the tax cuts that improved U.S. competitiveness and boosted the net incomes of voters. Democrats seem poised to emphasize a campaign message geared around something catchy called “net neutrality.”

Net neutrality is an Obama administration effort to proactively mandate that internet service providers cannot play favorites with content providers by permitting, for example, “fast lanes” for preferred content or “throttling,” which is intentionally slowing down certain online traffic. In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) imposed these rules, known as the open internet order, in a hotly debated effort that passed in a partisan vote of 3-2. This new reach into the regulation of the internet was achieved by analogizing service providers to a form of telecommunications, an area of jurisdiction of the FCC known as Title II.

At best, net neutrality is considered by critics to be a solution in search of a problem. At worst, it is a policy that stifles innovation, such as new advances in voice over internet products, and limits consumer choice. Critics of net neutrality also point to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as the appropriate forum for guarding against any anticompetitive behavior by internet service providers, should they arise.