if you want to compute differences between two known dates, use total_seconds
like this:
import datetime as dt
a = dt.datetime(2013,12,30,23,59,59)
b = dt.datetime(2013,12,31,23,59,59)
(b-a).total_seconds()
86400.0
#note that seconds doesn't give you what you want:
(b-a).seconds
0