2026-06-29T10:00:25.688Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
佐治亚州萨凡纳——
在这段爆红视频的镜头之外——由两台精心架设在舞台两侧的摄像机拍摄——周六下午，一座改造过的炼铁厂铁皮屋顶下挤满了一千多名民众，他们热得满头大汗。观众们零星鼓了几次掌，还短暂掀起了一阵“美国！美国！”的口号声，但大部分时间里，他们都安静地坐着聆听佐治亚州联邦参议员乔恩·奥索夫的演讲。
他没有遵循顾问们的传统建议，即在摇摆州向中间立场靠拢或采取温和路线。演讲中也没有任何支持或反对社会主义的表态。他仅顺带提及了倒影池，但重点是政府的无能和浪费国民警卫队资源包围该场地，而非拿池水颜色开玩笑。奥索夫反复猛烈抨击唐纳德·特朗普——尽管这个州曾两度被这位前总统拿下——同时表达了对特朗普败选后仍沉迷阴谋论的厌恶。
这套策略似乎在2026年民主党最难啃的必争选区中奏效，也让奥索夫一跃成为网络红人。他的集会活动规模越来越大，以至于周六活动所在街区周边的商贩都在售卖仿制的奥索夫T恤，以及为庭院标牌定制的、类似巴拉克·奥巴马“希望”海报风格的定制喷漆肖像。他从2017年昙花一现的众议院竞选失败者，到2020年竞选被认为无望的参议院席位，再到如今被卷入总统竞选的猜测之中。
奥索夫本人讨厌这种讨论，他的顾问们也同样反感，他还刻意避免回应相关话题。周五下午，在集会现场几条街外，他在敲定演讲稿草稿的间隙告诉CNN，任何关于2028年的猜测“都带有幻想足球的性质”。为了自己的政治生涯和个人心态，他竭尽所能地反复强调自己毫无兴趣——他要成为自萨姆·纳恩1990年最后一次竞选以来，首位在佐治亚州连任完整任期的民主党参议员。
“这么做有分散注意力的风险，会影响我们赢得中期选举这项至关重要的任务，”奥索夫说道，今年秋天他将迎战获得特朗普背书的联邦众议员迈克·柯林斯。相反，他将精力集中在本土事务上——处理选民服务，以及进行他的团队戏称为每月一次的“带所有人去做礼拜”的演讲。这类演讲开场会要求听众转向身边的邻居，承诺携手合作。
每场集会都会用半小时时间揭露腐败的后果，就像周六的演讲那样，逐一细数特朗普削减医保补贴以资助富人减税，随后却向富豪筹款举办计划中的白宫舞会；“贾里德亲王”库什纳一边谈判结束代价高昂的伊朗战争，一边为自己的投资公司募资；以及特朗普降低物价的失败承诺，如何与“企业的不尊重正令美国家庭窒息”的现状相契合。
“领导人有责任抨击这种丑恶现象，无论这是不是最精明的政治立场，”奥索夫说。
33岁首次来到华盛顿时，奥索夫曾迫切希望被认真对待，如今他不再那么锋芒毕露，但仍试图将个人生活中的非政治部分保密，并事先划定好自己的讨论边界。他的朋友、科罗拉多州联邦参议员约翰·希肯卢珀表示，即使在与其他民主党参议员的集体午餐会上，奥索夫也很少发言。希肯卢珀回忆道，这位新晋议员经常会提问，讨论他们应该或不应该关注哪些议题，“有点像在埋下伏笔，让他们产生主人翁意识和自主发现的感觉，这有助于赢得争论。”
奥索夫去年开始举办集会时，并未料到会如此火爆。虽然这位前纪录片制片人会对摄像机的布置提出意见，但它们在网络上引发的热度仍时常让他感到意外。今年5月的一场集会前，他差点删掉一段关于特朗普政府批准为哈萨克斯坦一座钨矿提供政府 funding的长篇故事，而他的两个长子与该矿存在关联。
奥索夫表示，他的手机上没有任何社交媒体应用程序，对一些同事沉迷其中的状态感到惊讶。“我想我错了，”当他听说那段被保留下来的视频获得了数百万播放量时，后来还对助手们开玩笑说。周六的集会上，他再次提及此事，将“你的税款正在支持一座钨矿”加入到他所谓的“投币式”美国政治的清单中：“钱投进去，好处送出来。”
奥索夫补充道，在阿尔巴尼亚，民众正因库什纳的另一笔牵连交易举行抗议，这场抗议甚至被称为“火烈鸟革命”，他呼吁美国人也开始站出来。
奥索夫曾考虑过不寻求连任。上次竞选结束后，他和高中就相识的妻子迎来了两个女儿，如今分别4岁和1岁。在与CNN的几次交谈中，这是少有的他停顿片刻、未能立刻给出答案的时刻。
“我发现与孩子分离真的很痛苦，”他沉默片刻后说道，回想起当初的决定。但奥索夫表示，他被一种“世界观”驱使，继续投身这场更大规模的斗争，以恢复人们对政府的信任。
现年39岁的奥索夫仍是参议院最年轻的议员。自上次竞选以来的近六年里，奥索夫从帮助民主党赢得参议院多数席位，到在少数党位置上辛苦耕耘，从拜登入主白宫，到特朗普卷土重来。但家里的两个女儿让他更加深切地感受到，自己就像一个闯入者，用他的话来说，这个“世界上最有权势的老年中心”里，“参议院里绝大多数都是某个年龄段的人，对他们来说为人父母已是遥远的记忆。这里也有很多人当了几十年参议员，这同样让他们远离了美国民众的日常生活现实。”
民主党盟友、参议院多数党政治行动委员会负责人J·B·珀施表示，这正是令政党领导人惊讶的原因所在：他们认为不需要投入太多资金来保护奥索夫——根据他最新的竞选筹款报告，奥索夫手头坐拥超过3200万美元资金。
“他看起来不像现任议员。他很年轻，充满活力，给人一种变革的感觉，”珀施说。
奥索夫更希望人们记住，仅仅四年之前，拉斐尔·沃诺克参议员为击败共和党人赫尔歇尔·沃克，投入了激烈的竞选活动和数百万美元，最终仅以一个百分点的优势胜出——而当时沃克尔的竞选还伴随着诸多争议。他将自己称为“弱势一方”，并预测今年的参议院竞选将是开销最大、竞争最激烈的一场。
奥索夫的对手似乎也同意这一点。“他正在失利，他自己也清楚，”柯林斯本周早些时候告诉CNN记者马努·拉朱，还补充道，“这家伙软弱、‘觉醒’，最终会被击败，因为佐治亚州民众将做出选择，而且这个选择显而易见。”
不过，从筹款、演讲策略到集会活动都由总统级别的活动公司操办来看，奥索夫的表现并不像一个弱势候选人。而在特朗普阵营和他本人之间做出选择，正是奥索夫所期望的局面。
在集会上，这位参议员重复了他最爱的一句话：“（共和党州长）布莱恩·坎普如此努力地阻止柯林斯获得提名，是有原因的。”坎普本人并未参选，这让奥索夫的竞选团队松了一口气。据知情人士透露，在那之后的几个月里，奥索夫的团队在幕后悄悄助力柯林斯，打压他们眼中更具吸引力的前大学橄榄球教练、获得坎普背书的德里克·杜利。
在共和党参议院决选几天前，奥索夫抓住特朗普背书柯林斯的机会，猛烈抨击柯林斯是特朗普的极端主义同伙和傀儡，并在言辞上将他归入自己所说的 perpetual self-dealing（ perpetual 可能应为 permanent，即持续自我牟利）的体系中。“这位大嘴巴国会议员，能当上议员只是因为他父亲曾是国会议员，”他在周六的集会上说道，这番话针对的是柯林斯过往社交媒体帖子引发的争议。
柯林斯则反驳称，奥索夫本人并未谴责足够多的仇恨言论。他还坚持否认2020年佐治亚州的选举结果， falsely claiming “Trump won that race”（错误声称“特朗普赢得了那场选举”）。
2021年胜选后，奥索夫便要求团队深耕选民服务：这在艰难的州情下是积累好感的精明政治策略，但他坚称这更多是为了尽自己的职责拯救民主。
“公众对政府的信任崩塌得如此严重，人们对腐败的严重程度认知如此广泛，以至于像提供优质服务这样看似简单的事情，就能起到恢复人们对宪法和美国政府信心的基本作用，”他告诉CNN。
支持者包括州众议员鲁瓦·罗曼，在本届佐治亚州参议院竞选中，亚历山大·奥卡西奥-科特兹已背书罗曼。罗曼告诉CNN：“说到选民服务，我想没人能比得上他的能力。”就连在共和党决选前的电台采访中猛烈抨击奥索夫的杜利，也承认“他在选民服务方面做得非常出色，如果有人在护照问题上遇到麻烦，他能把事情办好。”
“我很惊讶，人们会说他们没想到会受到如此周到的对待，”奥索夫说。
尽管奥索夫对个人生活保护得极为严密，甚至对消息泄露感到意外，但他向CNN证实，自己最喜欢的电影是2010年罗曼·波兰斯基执导的惊悚片《影子写手》，讲述一名作家被卷入一位政治家的核心圈子，随后发现丑闻并投身揭露的故事。
奥索夫仅用了几年时间制作关于国际腐败和侵权行为的纪录片，但他认为，自己常提及的调查记者生涯仍定义着如今的自己——如今他拥有国会传票权和影响力巨大的讲台。不过，过去五年来他所开展的调查并非通常的党派或作秀听证会噱头：他深入调查了寄养服务虐待和军人家属的住房问题，他的团队还自豪地宣称，他是唯一一位传唤过拜登政府官员——监狱管理局局长——就该机构的虐待和腐败指控进行调查的民主党人。
这也意味着他要与坚定的共和党田纳西州参议员玛莎·布莱克本合作，在他因监狱调查获奖时，还得到了当时的共和党同僚、印第安纳州参议员迈克·布劳恩的赞扬。
那些纪录片揭露了“那些自以为不受惩罚的坏人，在以为自己行事隐秘时所做的坏事”，奥索夫说，并解释道，“正是这种揭露权力滥用的动机，推动了我在参议院的大部分工作。”
他的女儿们也是推动因素之一，奥索夫表示，正是她们最初启发他开始调查寄养服务和军人家属住房问题。
一次又一次，拒绝2028年的征召
从集会上他身后晃动的、带有奥索夫竞选标志的镂空“O”牌——比奥巴马的标志颜色更深的蓝色，红白条纹穿过中心而非形成地平线——到他走下舞台时播放的歌曲，正是史蒂夫·旺德在芝加哥第44任总统新图书馆开幕式上演奏的曲目，奥索夫似乎有意煽动关于总统职位的猜测。这种猜测已经从《纽约时报》的专题报道，到左翼知名主播哈桑·皮克——曾发表过煽动性言论——称奥索夫是2028年的“黑马”候选人。
这位年轻的白人男性，已被证明能吸引黑人选民，支持以被杀害的佐治亚州学生莱肯·赖利命名的移民拘留法案，同时也严厉批评特朗普的极端做法；作为移民之子的犹太人，他支持以色列人民的安全，却又曾投票支持削减对以色列的武器资助；作为一名能在真正艰难的选区获胜的民主党人：这种逻辑看似如此明显，相关热度已经扩散，潜在对手的顾问们告诉CNN，他们已经开始考虑迎战奥索夫意味着什么。
“我的推特算法里全是这些，我会留意，也亲眼见过他，他真的非常擅长这一点，”亚利桑那州参议员马克·凯利说道，他也是参议院里的朋友，今年1月曾告诉CNN，自己正在积极考虑2028年的竞选。他和奥索夫因在情报委员会共事的时光以及飞行爱好而关系亲近——凯利曾是海军飞行员和宇航员，奥索夫在高中时就拿到了私人飞行员执照。
但奥索夫坚称自己毫无兴趣，并表示所有注意力都应放在2026年的选举上。“我认为我们应该根据这些潜在总统候选人在帮助我们赢得摇摆州和前线国会选区席位、恢复制衡方面的表现来评判他们。在我看来，这才是他们是否契合当前政治必要性的标准，”他说。
其中一些潜在候选人已经到访过佐治亚州，更多人则在主动联系。但当被问及，同样的评判标准是否也适用于这位正在摇摆州参选的现任候选人奥索夫时，奥索夫并未接话。
“我们必须赢得这场参议院席位的竞选，必须赢得那些摇摆州的众议院席位，因为如果我们不能恢复制衡，我不确定我们是否还有下一次机会，”他说。
他同样不愿就民主党更广泛的身份危机发表看法，也不愿告诉其他民主党人该说什么、做什么，比如被问及上周纽约市民主社会主义者的崛起时。
“我很少花时间思考民主党内部的派系政治，”他说，因为尽管存在分歧，“这些分歧更多存在于那些将民主党初选视为政治全部视野的地方、人群和团体中。”
当被问及以色列或移民政策——这两个问题在美国国内和民主党初选中都存在分歧——奥索夫也始终坚守既定立场，既强调每个人的尊严，也承认美国和其他国家有保障安全的必要。
这种有条不紊的回应在几周前就曾在网络上流传，当时一名TMZ记者追问奥索夫对特朗普给他起的新贬义绰号的看法。在https://x.com/TMZ/status/2067349131820159005?s=20的视频中，奥索夫神情专注但态度坚定地听完后，逐一列举了这位总统“丢脸”的几件事，随后顺势宣传了自己的竞选网站。
“我很有纪律，也有责任捍卫这个席位，”奥索夫告诉CNN，“在捍卫这个席位、面对真正的选举风险时，纪律是一种美德。”
周六集会结束后，奥索夫在绳索线区与支持者互动时，停下片刻反思人群的反应。和往常一样，这段演讲很快在网络上走红——奥巴马政府前官员、《Pod Save America》主持人汤米·维托尔总结了大家的感受：“我真想把这段演讲卷起来抽着享受。”
“每一场集会，热度都在增长。人们开始感觉到，运用公民权力扭转局面的时刻已经到来，”奥索夫在舞台侧方告诉CNN。
他正匆忙赶飞机回家与妻子和女儿团聚，计划在接下来几周的下一场集会之前，基本从政治讨论中销声匿迹。
“我会思考我希望她们成长在什么样的世界里。每一场集会都让我充满希望和信心，相信我们今年秋天能够发出强有力的声明，带来重大改变。”
Behind the scenes with Jon Ossoff, the 2026 — and maybe 2028 — Democratic viral hit
2026-06-29T10:00:25.688Z / CNN
Savannah, Georgia—
Outside the frame of the viral clips – shot by two cameras carefully positioned on either side of the stage – were over a thousand people, hot under the tin roof of a converted ironworks on Saturday afternoon. They applauded a few times and got one “USA! USA!” chant briefly going, but mostly they sat quietly listening as Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff spoke.
He practiced no consultant conventional wisdom of tacking center or soft in a purple state. Nor were there any swings for or against socialism. He made just one passing reference to the Reflecting Pool, but it centered on incompetence and wastefully sending the National Guard to surround the site, rather than giggling about the color. Ossoff drove hard at Donald Trump again and again, in a state the president won twice, while including his disgust at the conspiratorial obsession after Trump lost it the other time.
This is the strategy that appears to be working in a must-win race in 2026’s trickiest territory for Democrats and has turned Ossoff into an online sensation along the way. The rallies have become such events that vendors set up around the block from Saturday’s event to sell their own knock-off Ossoff T-shirts and bespoke spray-painted Barack Obama “Hope”-style portraits for lawn signs. He’s gone from flash-in-the-pan failed 2017 House candidate running for a written off Senate seat in 2020 to being pulled into presidential speculation.
Ossoff hates the talk, his advisers hate the talk, and he goes out of his way to avoid engaging with it. There’s “a fantasy football dimension” to anything about 2028, he told CNN a few blocks from the rally site on Friday afternoon, during a break from finalizing a draft of his remarks. Both for the sake of his psyche and his politics trying to be the first Democratic senator elected to a second full term in Georgia since Sam Nunn won his last race in 1990, he repeats in every way he can that he has zero interest.
“There’s a danger of that distracting from the mission critical task of winning the midterm elections,” said Ossoff, who will face Trump-endorsed Rep. Mike Collins in the fall. Instead, he’s focused on the home front – on constituent services and on delivering what his staff jokes are his monthly ‘taking everyone to church’ speeches, which start by asking attendees to turn to their neighbors and pledge to work together.
Every rally is a half-hour grounding of the consequences of corruption, like Saturday’s ticking through Trump’s cutting health care subsidies to fund tax cuts for the wealthy before soliciting rich donors to fund his planned White House ballroom, “Prince Jared” Kushner negotiating to end the costly war in Iran while raising money for his investment company, and how Trump’s failed promises to bring down prices fit right in with how the “corporate disrespect is suffocating” American families.
“There’s an obligation for leaders to attack the obscenity of this, whether or not it’s the shrewdest political stance,” Ossoff said.
No longer as bristling to be taken seriously as when he first arrived in Washington at 33, Ossoff still tries to keep the non-political parts of his life private and pre-set the bounds of what he’ll discuss. Even in group lunches with other Democratic senators he doesn’t say much, said his friend, Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper, describing how the freshman lawmaker often asks questions about what issues they should or shouldn’t be considering, “kind of putting the breadcrumbs out there so that they get the sense of ownership and discovery that helps you win arguments.”
Ossoff didn’t expect the rallies to take off quite this much when he started holding them last year, and, while the former documentary filmmaker will weigh in on the camera setups, the life they’ve taken online can still surprise him. At the last minute before a rally in May, he almost cut a long story about the Trump administration’s approval of government funding for a tungsten mine in Kazakhstan that his two oldest sons have been linked to.
Ossoff says he doesn’t have any social media apps on his phone and marvels at how some of his colleagues get lost in them. “I guess I was wrong,” he later joked to aides when he heard that the salvaged bit racked up millions of views. On Saturday, he reprised it, adding “your tax dollars are backing a tungsten mine” to a litany of what he called “coin-operated” American politics: “Money goes in, favors come out.”
In Albania, they’re protesting another entangled Kushner deal so much it’s being called the Flamingo Revolution, Ossoff added, calling for Americans to start standing up too.
Ossoff considered not running for another term. Since his last race, he and his high school sweetheart wife have had two daughters, now ages 4 and 1. Over the course of several conversations with CNN, it was the rare moment that he paused without having an answer ready to go.
“I find the separation from my kids to be really painful,” he said after a moment, thinking back at the decision. But Ossoff said he felt compelled by a “worldview” to keep going as part of a bigger fight to restore faith in government.
Now 39, Ossoff is still the youngest member of the Senate. In the nearly six years since his last race, Ossoff has gone from helping win the majority to toiling in the minority, from Joe Biden in the White House to the return of Trump, but it was those girls at home that accentuated how much he felt like an interloper in what he called “the world’s most powerful senior center.”
“It’s not just that the Senate is overwhelmingly full of people of a certain age for whom parenting is a distant memory. It’s also full of people who have been senators for decades, which equally distances them from the daily reality of American life,” Ossoff said.
To J.B. Poersch, the head of the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC, this is a big part of why party leaders are, to their amazement, not seeing as much of a need to spend money to protect Ossoff, who also happens to be sitting on more than $32 million according to his latest campaign fundraising report.
“He doesn’t feel like an incumbent. He’s young. There’s too much energy. He feels like change,” Poersch said.
Ossoff would prefer that more people remember that just four years ago, it took an intense campaign and millions of dollars for Sen. Raphael Warnock to beat Republican Herschel Walker by all of a percentage point — and that was with a swirl of controversy around Walker’s candidacy. He calls himself “the underdog” in what he predicts will be this year’s most expensive and closest Senate race.
Ossoff’s opponent seems to agree. “He’s losing, and he knows he’s losing,” Collins told CNN’s Manu Raju earlier in the week, adding “this guy is weak, he’s woke, and he will be defeated because at the end of the day Georgia is going have a choice, and that choice is clear as day.”
From the fundraising to the rhetoric to the rallies being staged by a presidential-level events firm, though, Ossoff is not acting much like an underdog, but that choice between Trump allegiance and himself is precisely what Ossoff wanted.
At the rally, the senator repeated what’s become a favorite line: “there’s a reason why (Republican Gov.) Brian Kemp worked so hard” to stop Collins from being the nominee. In the months after Kemp didn’t jump in himself to the Ossoff campaign’s relief, the senator’s team worked quietly behind the scenes to boost Collins and hurt who they saw as the more palatable former college football coach and Kemp-backed Derek Dooley, according to people involved.
Ossoff embraced the president’s endorsement of Collins days before the Republican Senate runoff, slamming him as Trump’s fellow extremist and puppet and rhetorically sliding him into the same system he describes of perpetual self-dealing. “The bigot congressman, who is only a congressman because his daddy was a congressman,” he said at Saturday’s rally, referencing scrutiny Collins has faced over past social media posts.
Collins argued the senator hasn’t condemned enough hateful people himself. He also stuck to his denialism about the 2020 Georgia results, falsely claiming “Trump won that race.”
After he won in 2021, Ossoff told staff to dig in on constituent services: smart politics for building up goodwill in a tough state, but he insists that it was more about doing his part to save democracy.
“The collapse of public trust in government is so intense, the recognition of the depth of corruption is so widespread, that something as seemingly simple as providing great service fulfills the essential function of restoring some confidence in the Constitution and American government,” he told CNN.
Fans include state Rep. Ruwa Romman, whom Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed for state Senate in Georgia this cycle. Romman told CNN, “for constituent services, I don’t think you’re going to find someone who can match his capabilities.” Even Dooley, in the middle of a radio interview blasting the senator in the lead-up to the GOP run-off, acknowledged, “He’s got really good constituent services, so if somebody has a problem with a passport, you know, he does good things like that.”
“I have been surprised how people express that they’re stunned to have been treated so well,” Ossoff said.
Though Ossoff is so guarded about his non-political life that he was surprised word got out, he confirmed to CNN that his favorite movie is “The Ghost Writer,” a 2010 Roman Polanski thriller about an author brought into a politician’s inner circle only to discover a scandal that he throws himself into exposing.
Ossoff spent just a few years producing documentaries about international corruption and abuses, but argues that what he often talks about as his investigative journalism career defines him still – now with congressional subpoena authority and a bully pulpit. The investigations he’s spent the last five years on, though, aren’t the usual partisan or show hearing bait: he’s dug into foster care abuses and bad housing practices for military families, and his team likes to brag that he is the only Democrat to have subpoenaed a Biden administration official, the Bureau of Prisons director, over allegations of abuse and corruption in the agency.
That’s also meant working with stalwart GOP Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn or, when he won an award for the prisons investigation, earning praise from his Republican partner then-Indiana Sen. Mike Braun.
The documentaries exposed “what bad people who assumed they had impunity were doing when they believed they were acting in secret,” Ossoff said, explaining, “it is the same motivation to expose the abuse of power that has driven so much of my work in the Senate.”
His daughters were factors in this too, Ossoff said, inspiring him to start digging into foster care and military family housing in the first place.
Saying no, over and over, to the 2028 draft
From the cut-out “O” signs of Ossoff’s logo—a little darker blue than Obama’s, the red-and-white stripes cross the center instead of forming the horizon—waving behind him at the rally, or walking off stage to the same song Stevie Wonder performed at the opening of the 44th president’s new library in Chicago, Ossoff can seem like he’s purposefully stoking presidential chatter that has already ranged from a feature in the New York Times to Hasan Piker, a prominent left-wing streamer with a history of inflammatory remarks, calling the senator his “dark horse” for 2028.
A young White guy with proven appeal to Black voters, a supporter of the immigration detention legislation named for the killed Georgia student Laken Riley but also a fierce critic of how far Trump has gone, a Jewish son of an immigrant who supports the security of the Israeli people yet voted early to cut arms funding to Israel and a Democrat who can win in actually tough territory: the logic seems so obvious that the excitement is already spreading, and advisers to potential rivals told CNN they’re already beginning to consider what taking him on might mean.
“It’s in my Twitter algorithm and I watch it, and I’ve seen him in person and he’s really, really good at that,” said Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, another friend in the chamber who told CNN in January he is actively looking at a 2028 run, but who’s bonded with Ossoff over their time together on the Intelligence Committee and occasionally about flying (Kelly was a Navy pilot and astronaut; Ossoff got his private pilot’s license in high school).
But Ossoff insists he’s not interested and that attention across the board should be on 2026. “I think we should judge these prospective presidential candidates by how much they’re doing to help us win battleground states and front-line congressional races to restore checks and balances. That to me will be the mark of their engagement with the political necessity of the moment,” he said.
Several of those prospective candidates have already been through Georgia. More have been reaching out. But pressed on whether that same standard for potential presidential candidates might apply to him as the one actually on the ballot in his battleground state, Ossoff didn’t bite.
“We have to win this Senate race and we have to win those battleground House races because if we don’t restore checks and balances, I’m not sure we have another chance to,” he said.
He’s as uninterested in sounding off on the broader Democratic identity crisis or telling other Democrats what to say and do, like when asked about last week’s democratic socialist spike in New York City.
“I don’t spend much time thinking about factional, Democratic politics,” he said, because while the divide exists, “it exists more in those places and for those people and groups for whom the Democratic primary is the horizon of politics.”
When pressed on Israel or immigration policy – two issues dividing the country and the Democratic primary season – Ossoff also stays tight on message, stressing both the dignity of every human being and acknowledging a need for safety and security in the US and other countries.
That’s the kind of disciplined response that made rounds online a few weeks ago when a TMZ reporter pressed Ossoff on Trump’s new derogatory nickname for him. In https://x.com/TMZ/status/2067349131820159005?s=20, Ossoff listened with an attentive but unmoving expression, then responded by ticking through a few ways the president is “disgraced” before slipping in a plug to his campaign website.
“I am disciplined, and I have an obligation to defend this seat,” he told CNN. “And in the defense of this seat, with real electoral stakes, discipline is a virtue.”
Working the rope line after Saturday’s rally, Ossoff stopped for a moment to reflect on the way the crowd had responded. Online, as usual, the speech would quickly take off – Obama administration alumni and “Pod Save America” host Tommy Vietor summarized his sentiment: “I want to roll this speech up and smoke it.”
“Every single one of these, the intensity is growing. People are starting to feel that the moment is at hand when they can use their power as citizens to turn things around,” Ossoff told CNN at the side of the stage.
He was rushing off to catch a flight back to his wife and daughters, planning to largely disappear from the political conversation until he pops up for his next rally in a few weeks.
“I think about what kind of world I want them to grow up in. Every one of these gives me hope and confidence that we’re going to be able to make a major statement and a big difference this fall.”