Political Plan of Taking over the USA Congress by Democratic Socialists in the Post-Obama Era

Abstract

The congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) offered a new political agenda for the USA, the Green New Deal, which was picked up by the 2020 Democratic candidates running for President. The article analyzes the case of AOC and deals with the following questions: What organizations stand behind this project? What technologiеs and tactics did they use? Can their political technologies be considered as manipulative towards democratic elections? Our analysis reveals the two organizations behind the Cortez’s elections, Justice Democrats and The Young Turks, as well as their new polittechnological project known as a Brand New Congress. It’s goal is to replace members of Congress who do not share their radical socialist agenda with new members supported by their organizations. Thesе organizations of social organizers have participated in several presidential elections since 2004 and have invented political technology called “big organizing” or “distributed organizing.” The distributed organizing model moves away from the traditional hierarchical management structure, or the top-down model, and opts for the bottom-up model where volunteer leaders are assigned more autonomy in local campaigning efforts while they are still supervised by campaign managers. The authors of distributed organizing model also call it revolution tactics. The article describes other new political technologies used in the project: casting candidates from protest minorities, writing political and legislative initiatives for them as well as proposals, and assigning elected candidates their staffers. Social organizers claim that the revolution they work for tends to revitalize the democracy in the USA while, as it shown in the article, they in fact work around the democratic institutions, including elections, and aim to fundamentally transform the social system in the USA. The analysis makes these technologies visible and therefore open for professional and public discussion as well as for working out countermeasures to their manipulations.