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.
