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The truth is that Mr. Obama was only sort of techie. More important, his administration did not challenge the industry in any significant way. In the Obama years, Silicon Valley consolidated its influence and centralized its power without oversight. In addition, the idea took hold that the tech industry was full of liberals, when in fact it is more libertarian-lite with a strong proclivity for an unusual combination of live-and-let-live social mores and dont regulate my innovation or tax me business attitude.

In fact, from the start of the internet age in the 1990s, the right has been more clever than its rivals in exploiting ever-morphing tech to influence vast numbers of people with targeted messages.

While its hard to forget in the age of Fox News ubiquity, a couple of decades ago most of the truly powerful media outlets were centrist (or slightly left of center), and mass-media broadcast technology was not readily available to the emerging conservative movement.

Thus, these outsiders latched on to the web, which in many cases meant they were among the first to effectively use highly targeted email and search ads. Back in the early 2000s, people like the evangelical political strategist Ralph Reed showed us what was coming: campaigns that are fought and won online, and power shifting to those who know how to move the tech levers.

Right now thats people like Mr. Parscale, whose tactic is to use the entire arsenal of weapons that companies like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have provided in the most creative and sometimes nefarious of ways. And, as loath as I am to say this, why shouldnt he create a raging digital fire of confusion and propaganda and microtargeted lies and truths if no one is making rules to stop him? It is not meant as a compliment, but right now being the best tech arsonist is what rates.

Meanwhile, as it all burns, the Democrats in Iowa are fiddling away on an app that cant tally what is a relatively simple set of data. Long ago, during a debate about the Obamacare site mess and what it meant for eventual online voting, I suggested to a panel of Washington power players that maybe we get a start-up like Tinder to run the voting system, since it did complex matching calculations in real time.

My comment was greeted by looks of horror, with one panel member asking me why our democracy should rely on dating app technology.

The answer was simple: because it works.

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Sorry, Republicans Rule the Internet - The New York Times