But in the aftermath of the election, a stark divide has emerged between political operatives and the techies who worked side-by-side. At issue is the code created during the Obama for America (OFA) 2012 campaign: the digital architecture behind the campaign’s website, its system for collecting donations, its email operation, and its mobile app. When the campaign ended, these programmers wanted to put their work back into the coding community for other developers to study and improve upon. Politicians in the Democratic party felt otherwise, arguing that sharing the tech would give away a key advantage to the Republicans. Three months after the election, the data and software is still tightly controlled by the president and his campaign staff, with the fate of the code still largely undecided. It’s a choice the OFA developers warn could not only squander the digital advantage the Democrats now hold, but also severely impact their ability to recruit top tech talent in the future.

1. It basically makes the technology useless. As one of the techies who worked on the project notes, the software "will be mothballed," meaning that four years from now it'll be useless. What the politicians see as keeping an advantage is really just squandering a useful framework.
2. It completely misunderstands how technology advances and works. No one expects software from today to be the same four years from now. By mothballing the tech, it will mean that the next campaign will effectively be starting from scratch. Open sourcing it would allow additional work to continue on this.
3. You can learn from others as well. The really shortsighted part is this insistence that open sourcing it "helps the other side." Again, what will be used four years (or even two years) from now will be quite different as the technology advances. And having it open sourced means that lots of folks can jump in and build on the tech in the meantime. And, yes, even Republican techies might work on it, and the Dems can learn from them as well.
4. Keeping it closed pisses off the techies, who will be less likely to contribute or join the team next time around.
5. If the Democrats believe they have stronger technologists, then next election they should still be able to make innovations faster than their opponents.
6. It quite possibly violates some open source licenses, since much of the code was built on open source software, some of which requires any additional work to also be open sourced.
7. Keeping the tech secret also means that other campaigns (beyond just elections) can't make use of the technology as well, which could actually hurt causes that the Democrats support.

Warrantless Surveillance/PATRIOT Act

2008: "We support constitutional protections and judicial oversight on any surveillance program involving Americans. We will review the current Administration's warrantless wiretapping program. We reject illegal wiretapping of American citizens, wherever they live. We reject the use of national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. We reject the tracking of citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war...We will revisit the Patriot Act and overturn unconstitutional executive decisions issued during the past eight years."

2012: The platform is silent on this issue.

“While we must combat the on-line theft of intellectual property, current proposals in Congress raise serious legal, policy and operational concerns. Rather than prematurely bringing the Protect IP Act to the Senate floor, we should first study and resolve the serious issues with this legislation. Considering this bill without first doing so could be counterproductive to achieving the shared goal of enacting appropriate and additional tools to combat the theft of intellectual property. I encourage the Senate Majority to reconsider its decision to proceed to this bill.”

If you keep reading that story, the Democrats listed all remain adamant that they'll remain co-sponsors of the legislation but work to "fix it".

Bullshit.

It's been a while since we've seen Democrats this tone deaf, this oblivious to political reality.

You have an entire wired generation focused on this issue like a laser, fighting like hell to protect their online freedoms, and it's FUCKING REPUBLICANS who are playing the heroes by dropping support?

Those goddam Democrats would rather keep collecting their Hollywood checks, than heed the will of millions of Americans who have lent their online voice in an unprecedented manner.

Are they really this stupid? Can they really be this idiotic?

As the election season is ramping up, so too are pols’ trips to Silicon Valley. That includes Vice President Joe Biden, who’s heading to San Francisco on Jan. 18 for a lunch reception. Tickets cost $2,500 per person, with $7,500 for lunch and a photo for two. Sen. Robert Menendez will also be in the area on the same day, starting with a dinner in Menlo Park, Calif., followed by a breakfast in San Francisco.