To anyone paying attention, it was clear for several years that Jon Ossoff is among the least-lauded and most impressive of the younger generation of Democrats on Capitol Hill.
On Saturday night last, in Atlanta, the 38-year-old Georgia senator gave a speech of such blistering eloquence that he couldn’t help but turn heads nationally as he delivered a line that yet could become an instrumental part of the midterm election year.
“We were told that Maga was for working-class Americans,” he reminded a big, vocal crowd.
“But this is a government of, by and for the ultra-rich. This is the wealthiest cabinet ever. This is the Epstein class. They are the elites they pretend to hate.”
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That lone phrase – the Epstein class – is so clean and unforgettable and wounding to the administration that if the Democratic Party does not seize it and run with it as a slogan, it is missing a turn. Ossoff’s entire speech was a headline-grabbing repudiation of last weekend’s antics by the Trump administration, when an offensive post about Michelle and Barack Obama appeared on the president’s social media account.
“Now, many are you of here because you just can’t stand what is being done to our country. You’re seeing what I’m seeing, right? The president posting about the Obamas like a Klansman at 1am. You see our government transformed into a tool of one man’s personal vengeance and power and enrichment. You see the president and his family rake in billions while Americans struggle to make ends meet.”
Ossoff spoke for a sharp half hour. He has the classic Democrat-on-the-rise image: a recognisable preppy Kennedy sheen but without any of the mythology or psychedelic baggage that has become a burden for all aspiring political figures from that clan – the latest, Jack Schlossberg, a grandson of JFK and running for Congress in New York’s 12th district, is a favourite punch bag for the conservative commentariat and influencers.
But there is something also in Ossoff’s slow-fast, lilting cadence and the no-tie-shirt-sleeves-rolled casualness that contains flickers of the emergent Barack Obama. This is nothing new: when Ossoff first made waves at state level, in 2017, there were debates over whether he was affecting an Obama delivery.
The Democratic Party has so many potential 2028 presidential front-runners that it risks having no clear identifiable leader at all when the primary debates come out. This week, the possibility that Ossoff has been hiding in plain sight acquired a little more shine.
When Trump assumed office in January, Ossoff was regarded as the occupant of the most vulnerable of all Democratic Senate seats as the only party member seeking senate re-election in a state that Trump had won. And Trump has had Georgia on his mind for four long years.
But his performance over the past year has flipped that: Brian Kemp, Georgia’s Republican governor and an anticipated challenger, has decided not to run, leaving the Republicans with no obvious candidate and several contenders.
Ossoff has raised a whopping $25 million in cash and is drawing big crowds to rallies a full eight months out from the November election date. His performance last Saturday has generated new levels of enthusiasm.
Recalling his reaction when Ossoff was first elected in 2021, Joe Scarborough, the host of MSNBC’s liberal Morning Joe show, told viewers this week: “I was like, this guy got elected in Georgia? He looked like an extra in Warren Beatty’s Reds. This guy looks like he was in a movie about Warren Beatty’s commies. And he won!”
It’s about as niche as a film reference can get but it reinforces the broader point about Ossoff. He has skilfully walked the tightrope of thriving as a liberal Democrat in a conservative state. Although his support base is concentrated around the urban hubs of Atlanta and Savannah, Ossoff’s message is resonating with voters who have found that Trump election promises are not showing up in household bills, or healthcare.
His emergence in national politics coincided with a moment of true crisis in American political life. The former documentary maker was just 33 years old when he was elected to the Senate on January 5th, 2021, along with Raphael Warnock, the pastor who became the first black Democrat to win a Senate seat in a southern state. Warnock won a special election, also on January 5th, 2021: a year later he campaigned for and won a full-term election, meaning his seat is safe until 2028. But Warnock and Ossoff’s moment in the sunshine was short lived. As it turned out, their day of triumph was immediately followed by events of January 6th, 2021, the day a mob of Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol in Washington, DC.
As the first Jewish senator from Georgia, Ossoff has lost support among Jewish leaders over his sustained criticisms of Binyamin Netanyahu’s campaign in Gaza and has shown no inclination to deviate from that stance.
“I expressed in the early weeks of the war my concern with the level of civilian harm and wide-scale destruction in Gaza,” he told the New York Times last year. “I have strongly supported security assistance to Israel since October 7th, but make no apology for opposing the reckless killing of non-combatants.”
The obstacles he faces are likely to increase once Trump indicates his preferred Republican challenger. Riley Gaines, the conservative activist who has led the campaign against the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports, launched a campaign in January aimed at persuading Georgia voters to reject Ossoff because of his stance and voting record on that issue.
And Ossoff’s detractors maintain the senator – who with wife Dr Alisha Kramer, an obstetrician, celebrated the birth of their second child last summer – is straight from the Democratic playbook of central casting: just the latest plausible, burnished, articulate, great white hope who ultimately amounts to a career politician.
But while the opening zingers of Ossoff’s Atlanta speech attracted all the attention, the most interesting passage was reserved for his panoramic view of where American political discourse and practice have gone awry.
“Now, look, defeating Donald Trump and his allies is essential but it’s only part of the job ahead. Because Donald Trump is a symptom of a deeper disease. Decades of deepening political corruption. Growing inequality of power and wealth. These are the failures of an ancient and visionless political class entrenched in a system built to keep them in office forever. Members of Congress who just sit idly in their seats collecting lobbyists’ cheques, trading stocks, saying whatever the polls tell them to.
“And on their watch, the national spirit that defeated fascism, that landed men on the moon, that passed civil rights laws, was replaced by a small and selfish politics. It’s a system designed to serve donors. And then Citizens United came along: the worst court decision in modern American history, flooding the airwaves with ads paid for by secret donors who bankrolled both parties. All of this banked Congress to serve the powerful and forget the people.”
The words are impressive – even if spoken by a politician who from the get-go demonstrated his ability to generate campaign funds. But now, he is enjoying breakneck momentum in campaigning to retain a vulnerable Democratic seat with a message that is both daring and attracting listeners far beyond the Peach State.
If he is returned in November after an outspoken, authoritative campaign as a second-term senator by Georgia, then he will belong to the first rank of likely Democratic White House aspirants.
