‘Democrats are approaching what could be their most wide-open presidential primary in decades, but I’d venture a confident prediction today: one of the two Georgia senators will be on the party’s ticket in 2028. Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, the two Democrats who delivered their party a majority with their twin victories at the end of the first Trump term, could bookend the outgoing president eight years later.
Ossoff, 39, embodies the sort of articulate, next-generation candidate — straddling the ideological divide and wielding a mix of outsider and insider credentials — that encompasses the model with which Democrats historically win. And Warnock, 56, would be the pastor-healer who could unify a fractious party and help cleanse a country crying out for a purge. Each also benefits by comparison to the last two presidents — which is a nicer way of saying it has been a decade since the country had a leader who could leverage the bully pulpit by speaking coherently.
Neither senator is aggressively positioning themselves to run, at least not in the unsubtle fashion of some of their Democratic contemporaries. But both are making the most of that most precious gift in politics: timing. Ossoff’s seat just happens to be up this year — the election cycle before the presidential election — and that re-election bid has become the vehicle by which he’s becoming a sensation in his party. Capitalizing on the dominant medium of the era, Ossoff has harnessed short-form videos criticizing Trump from his campaign rallies to immediately reach the social media feeds of millions of Democrats, who with each click prompt the algorithm to feed them more of his footage….’ (Jonathan Martin via Politico)
