There used to be a kind of liberal parlor game in which you discussed whether America would be ready, first, for a female, black, or Jewish president.
asserted
America → use → president
This was, oh, somewhere around the dawn of time, when WASP dynasties still roamed the land and more diverse representation in national politics appeared an unassailable barrier.
asserted
representation → roam → politics
It sort of caught everybody by surprise that the first black president came not too long after that—and with such impressive smoothness that it almost seemed as if identitarian politics might vanish for good.
uncertain
politics → catch → smoothness
Then there were slips betwixt cup and lip in electing the first female president, and now, with Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff leading the betting markets as the likely Democratic nominee in 2028, the first Jewish president possibly comes into view.
uncertain
president → be → view
I really haven’t thought about that parlor game in quite a while—in part because our politics has, in the last couple of decades, become something very different: the Trump circus, the infotainment wars, the bareknuckle mud fight between the two rival parties.
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politics → think → parties
But, with Ossoff president-maxxing hard, as Sarah Longwell put it, there’s a certain wave of nostalgia—a link to a different, more innocent era.
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Longwell → maxxe → era
Some of it is Ossoff’s youth and his Mr. Smith-like earnestness—the way he seems to treat every Senatorial committee hearing as a (camera-ready) civics lesson.
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he → seem → lesson
Some of it is the direct connection to Obama’s speaking style—so much so that, when the writer John McWhorter heard his concession speech for a 2017 congressional campaign, he thought it might be a Saturday Night Live parody of Obama.
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it → hear → Obama
The one policy position Ossoff really focuses in on is to overturn Citizens United—the 2010 Supreme Court case that turned on the spigot for corporate money in politics—and by constitutional amendment if necessary.
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that → focus → amendment
It’s as if Citizens United were the original sin and Trump the ensuing apple of discord, the manifestation of corruption in politics.
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Trump → ’ → politics
But what it is mostly is a certain anger, the aggrievement of a generation that had its public life stolen from it by Trump—and Ossoff’s tone and approach may well, finally, be what gets us out of the Trump era.
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what → have → era
In looking back at how the Democrats have campaigned in the Trump years, what’s striking
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what → look → years
is that—in a real sense—they haven’t run against him at all.
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they → run → him
In a November 2016 pre-election article that didn’t exactly age well, Nicholas Lemann favorably compared Hillary Clinton’s campaign strategy to the sort of scorched earth tactics advocated by Sun Tzu—avoiding pitched battle with Trump and keeping to message.
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Lemann → age → message
Joe Biden hunkered down in his basement for most of the 2020 campaign.
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Biden → hunker → campaign
Kamala Harris, in 2024, exercised an abundance of caution and ran on a platitudinous “joy” campaign that seemed to exist in a parallel universe without Trump in it.
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that → exercise → it
Meanwhile, Ossoff—who isn’t even running against Trump, who is running for Senate reelection against a man named Mike Collins—is pulling out all the stops against Trump.
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who → run → Trump
He has called Trump a “draft-dodging crook” and a “broken man” and compared him to a “Klansman.”
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He → call → Klansman
He recently instigated a Washington fracas by saying Trump wants to “travel with Natalie,” implying that Trump was having an affair with Natalie Harp, an aide who, up to that moment, no one had really heard of.
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one → instigate → moment
And he became, yea, biblical with his claim for the upcoming elections that “we will rebuke [Trump] so decisively that no president will repeat his abuses for centuries.”
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president → become → centuries
The inclination of Trump opponents from Jeb Bush and Scott Walker to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris has been to kind of wish him away.
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inclination → wish → him
Sometimes there has been the “high road” that Michelle Obama encouraged.
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Obama → encourage → that
Often, as the Democratic strategist Fred Hicks told The Atlantic, there has been a tendency to “bring a term paper to a gun fight.”
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strategist → tell → fight
What Ossoff seems to have hit upon—and why he is being taken so seriously as a possibility for 2028—is the sense of real personal (and generational) aggrievement for what Trump has done to the country.
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Trump → seem → country
“This isn’t the world I want to leave [my daughters],” he told an audience at a recent stump speech, going well beyond the usual negativity that politicians muster.
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politicians → want → that
Visiting the Ossoff campaign, Atlantic writer Elaine Godfrey was struck, at a policy level, by the emptiness of what Ossoff was for.
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Ossoff → visit → what
“I have never attended a political rally where a candidate’s supporters seemed quite so unable to articulate a reason for their support,” she wrote.
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she → attend → support
But that didn’t stop Ossoff’s supporters from being enthusiastic.
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that → stop → supporters
“It’s like taking a clean shower to hear these things spoken so clearly,” one rallygoer said.
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rallygoer → ’ → shower
It’s about washing away the bad juju of Trumpism and—after a rigorous exorcism—getting back to the more respectful and optimistic politics of an earlier era.
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It → ’ → era
To do that seems to require a few conceptual shifts that Democrats have struggled with.
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Democrats → seem → that
They have to adapt to the entirely pugilistic nature of American politics in the Trump and, more broadly, social media era—that the point of any public interaction is to land the blow that’s then going to be circulated around the internet.
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that → have → internet
They have to reconcile themselves to the entirely us versus them nature of the hyperpartisan political structure—there really are no points here for pretending to be conciliatory.
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They → have → structure
And they have to be willing to really rake the sea floor in their use of language—Kamala Harris somehow spent the entire 2024 campaign carefully modulating her language until she finally used the word “fascist” a couple of weeks before the election and got nothing out of it, and this at a time when Trump regularly curses and throws everything he can think of at the Dems.
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he → have → Dems
Uniquely among the Democratic Party leaders, Ossoff seems to have developed a comfort with all three elements of the new communications playbook.
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Ossoff → seem → playbook
There’s a sub-genre on YouTube of Ossoff committee hearing videos, in which Ossoff has some member of the administration in front of him and has five minutes of question time to, in the words of the people who give YouTube videos their titles, “shred,” “destroy,” and “torch” the Trump officials.
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who → ’ → officials
There’s little attempt at genuine substance and none of civility, and the language is carefully calibrated to really perk up the YouTube comments section.
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language → ’ → section
One video, with Director of National Intelligence nominee Jay Clayton, can stand in for the rest.
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video → stand → rest
Ossoff opens by asking Clayton “you have an obligation to be honest and forthright with this committee, correct?” to which Clayton takes quite some time replying and then, setting maybe the world’s record for shrugging, says, “Yes,” after which Ossoff moves on to his main point of business.
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Ossoff → open → business
“Who won the 2020 election?” he asks.
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he → win → election
…and 68 more, not listed.
The Aporia
