Jon Ossoff has the Juice
...and Donald Trump just gave him a boost.
This Jackal is going to sound like I’m glazing Jon Ossoff, and to an extent you could say that’s true. But it’s really one about Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud. Let’s do some fun political analysis.
I am writing this in advance of Donald Trump’s address from Thursday night, which will supposedly be about voter fraud in the 2020 Election. I don’t know what he’s going to say (who really does?), but there are reports that he’s going to declare Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock’s 2020 election victories to be illegitimate.
Who knows if that’s true, or if it’s simply a head fake from the Administration. Is it possible that President Trump just wants people to pay more attention to a speech he’s going to make and his team floated the stuff about election fraud to the media? Sure. But if it is about election fraud, Trump is doing Ossoff a huge favor.1
A few months back I said I was eventually going to write about a “Democratic Ronald Reagan,” since Trump currently looks like the Republican Jimmy Carter. I think Ossoff is the dude.
I know what you’re thinking: He isn’t really registering in the polls, which are dominated by Kamala Harris (name recognition is key here) or Gavin Newsom. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on Harris (who I think people are underestimating), but Newsom is worth digesting. To me, he is a weaker candidate because he has what we can call, “The Hillary Problem.” He is actually on the more moderate side as far as Democrats go and isn’t seen as someone who excites progressives within the Party. But he’s perceived as being very liberal by the public.
This was Hillary Clinton’s problem: On some issues (especially foreign policy), she was closer to Republicans than she was to a lot of progressives. Her first healthcare proposal as First Lady actually rejected a single-payer option and preserved a private system.2 When she ran in 2008, she rejected gay marriage. In 2016, she was a huge supporter of free trade (which I guess is now a left-wing position, but it wasn’t at the time), and she was also pretty tough on crime.
But independents perceived Clinton to be extremely liberal and perceived Donald Trump to be more moderate, and perception is important! While I do think any Democrat in 2028 is going to have an advantage against a Republican opponent, Newsom follows the same structure as Clinton’s loss against Donald Trump in 2016.
So, in order to win comfortably, Democrats should theoretically find someone who is the inverse of those qualities: Someone who is perceived as moderate but is actually progressive enough to excite the base. And I think that person is Jon Ossoff.
First off, he’s from Georgia and you can’t win there unless you can appeal to less partisan voters. In 2020, he won 63% of self-described moderate voters, and his polling numbers against his challenger, Mike Collins, look very good. Social media has a way of convincing us that all Democrats are socialists and all Republicans are MAGA, but huge chunks of both Parties describe themselves as moderates, and they see Ossoff as pretty reasonable.3
He has also stuck his neck out and taken more left-wing votes than, say, John Fetterman, who is from a bluer state than Georgia. That has gotten the attention of the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
He’s also hunky, which helps.
Handsome dude! There is a theory in politics that argues for simply nominating “hot” people and letting the policy issues sort themselves out. It worked with Barack Obama, after all, who won his two elections by a lot.
Ossoff also has moments of real star power. He recently questioned Trump’s nominee for the Director of National Intelligence, Jay Clayton:
This is relevant to Trump’s speech from last night. According to reports, he is going to say that Ossoff’s election in 2020 was the product of fraud and thus invalid.
I have no idea if Trump is actually going to say that, but it is obviously not true simply based on the video above. If Trump had actually won in 2020, Clayton would have no problem at all saying, “Well, Donald Trump won and Joe Biden stole it.” But he can’t say that, because he doesn’t want to commit perjury. But he also can’t say what he knows is true: That Joe Biden won the election, because Trump would immediately yank his nomination.
Sticking with Georgia, here is testimony under oath from the late Lindsey Graham (RIP) from the election fraud case there:
Here is one more for good measure:
It is sad that Lindsey Graham is dead. He was only 71. My parents are older. But it is also sad that these men can only tell the truth when they are put under oath.
Trump will probably present “evidence” of election fraud, and use it to undermine Ossoff’s race. But his closest supporters in Congress know that all he’s going to do is give a boost to Ossoff’s chances for reëlection in November.
None of this is an endorsement, by the way (which the Jackal does not do anyway). It is just an observation that it might be time to “buy” Ossoff and hope for a big return.
I’ll be back next week but then we begin our normal August holiday. See you all soon.
ABC and NBC have apparently told their own reporters that they’re not going to air the speech. My guess is that they got wind of its contents and it will indeed be Trump re-litigating the 2020 Election.
Fun fact: In response to Clinton’s proposal, conservative think tanks came up with a right-wing solution, which mandated health insurance by forcing everyone to put their skin money in the game. It became their answer to left-wing proposals and was even implemented by the little-known Republican governor of Massachusetts named Mitt Romney, to great success. Years later, Clinton’s Democratic opponent would take its structure and turn it into Obamacare. Truly wild history.