Uber Picks Obama’s Former Campaign Manager to Wage Its Regulatory Battles | Hacker News Reader

Uber Picks Obama’s Former Campaign Manager to Wage Its Regulatory Battles

nytimes.com

36 pointskanamekun14 comments

If the taxi industry hired the same guy, then HN would be up in arms about how the industry is dying and that lobbying is destroying the world.

The hypocrisy is astounding.

I think this is where innovation will plateau and BAU wars will start

He's got a high profile and is smart, sure, but the lobbying world is completely different than the campaign world. Seems like an odd choice to me.

Unless he'll be handling more of a grassroots approach than an inside-game strategy? Stuff like: http://go.uber.org/california/ maybe?

How is the lobbying world any different then campaign? They seem exactly the same too me.

Plouffe ran an exceptional 'outsider' campaign, where a lot of the party apparatchiks were already pledged to Clinton, and the Obama campaign built their own outside infrastructure to compete.

Lobbying is about 'insiders'. You can nudge them with popular pressure, of course, but it's not like an election where the party insider only has 1 vote they completely control at the end of the day.

Yeah.. but he won, so now he's an insider. I'm sure he's adjusted to the status change by now, 6 years later.

He's not dealing with regulators, ever. It's not "insider" versus "outsider."

One big difference is that outside of states with lots of referendums (referenda?), the target audience is completely different.

Lobbyists only need to influence the opinions/judgments of a handful of regulators or several dozen legislators. Campaign strategists need to find and target a few million swing voters.

Of course, having public opinion on your side can be extremely helpful when influencing legislators, hence the root comment's caveat re: a grassroots campaign.

Campaigning is talking to the public. Lobbying (or "Government Affairs") is talking to policymakers. They have some commutative components and they often work in conjunction with each other at some level, but they are entirely different professions/practices.

They are very similar. Similar players in both worlds. Slightly different skills - but mostly the same basic work. just different constituents.

Hiring the ex-employees of an organization is a roundabout way of bribing the current employees of an organization. It bootstraps a process where people who make the right decisions are "taken care of" later.

I agree, but how does that apply in this situation? Aren't most of the battles at the municipal level?

Brilliant idea.

Turn public opinion, city council pretty much has to follow. The free market might appeal to us but it's not going to appeal to your typical city voter. If uber can turn its message into something urban voters can identify with, they can generate favorable legislation, and urban voters generally love Obama's message.

Maybe this will be the push needed for Uber to take Lyft out of the competition.

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