{ "archive_path": "archive/1789740910.396482", "base_url": "www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/jon-ossoff-midterms-senate-georgia/688663", "basename": "", "bookmarked_date": "2026-09-18 14:15", "canonical": { "archive_org_path": "https://web.archive.org/web/www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/jon-ossoff-midterms-senate-georgia/688663", "dom_path": "output.html", "favicon_path": "favicon.ico", "git_path": "git/", "google_favicon_path": "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.theatlantic.com", "headers_path": "headers.json", "htmltotext_path": "htmltotext.txt", "index_path": "index.html", "media_path": "media/", "mercury_path": "mercury/content.html", "pdf_path": "output.pdf", "readability_path": "readability/content.html", "screenshot_path": "screenshot.png", "singlefile_path": "singlefile.html", "warc_path": "warc/", "wget_path": "www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/jon-ossoff-midterms-senate-georgia/688663/index.html" }, "domain": "www.theatlantic.com", "extension": "", "hash": "BDQ7G5XXTGH68GK5GE7N", "history": { "archive_org": [], "dom": [], "favicon": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--output", "favicon.ico", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.theatlantic.com" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-18T16:18:59.222570+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "favicon.ico", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789740910.396482", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-18T16:18:58.734377+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "git": [], "headers": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--head", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/jon-ossoff-midterms-senate-georgia/688663/" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-18T16:18:59.566525+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "headers.json", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789740910.396482", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-18T16:18:59.229676+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "htmltotext": [], "media": [], "mercury": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/@postlight/parser/cli.js", "https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/jon-ossoff-midterms-senate-georgia/688663/" ], "cmd_version": "1.0.0", "end_ts": "2026-09-18T16:19:10.735622+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "mercury", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789740910.396482", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-18T16:19:07.313323+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/readability-extractor/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmp9f7srq42", "https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/jon-ossoff-midterms-senate-georgia/688663/" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2026-09-18T16:19:07.299617+00:00", "index_texts": [ "If you\u2019re a Democrat, attending a Jon Ossoff rally feels very good. Therapeutic, even. Many Democrats feel as if every day of the second Trump administration has brought some fresh horror: a discouraging development in the never-ending Iran war; a new vow of retribution from the 80-year-old leader of the free world; or the revelation of yet another money-making venture cooked up by the Trumps.But now, from the South, a young senator has emerged, with a deep voice promising change and a speaking cadence not unlike Barack Obama\u2019s. His dark hair sits just so; his skin is perfectly even\u2014is that makeup he\u2019s wearing? Never mind. We\u2019re looking at his sleeves now, which are carefully rolled up and emphasize biceps that are, well, quite noticeably larger than they were when Georgia voters sent him to Congress in 2021.More important, this senator sounds different from other Democrats. Ossoff is doing something on the campaign trail that basically no one else in his party seems able to pull off: elegantly and comprehensively skewering the Trump administration, while earning some Republican support.He\u2019s doing this in speeches at his campaign events, such as the one I attended on Sunday in Athens, Georgia. But those speeches seem carefully calibrated to be heard by an audience much farther away: Every week, millions of Americans are encountering Ossoff on their phones, through perfectly produced clips of the senator unveiling a new insult or innovative critique of the Trump administration. \u201cHe\u2019s trying to put his face on the money. Did you see that? He\u2019s building a monument to himself,\u201d he said in May. \u201cHe\u2019s doing these things now because no one will honor him when he\u2019s gone.\u201d Last month, the senator\u2019s reference to the zealous Trump aide Natalie Harp spiked Google searches for Harp by 5,000 percent.Read: Ossoff\u2019s \u2018Natalie\u2019 momentThe revelation of Ossoff\u2019s particular talent explains why the senator is suddenly all over the news and Instagram, and why so many people in his party are breathlessly positioning him as the new favorite to win the Democratic nomination in 2028. Premature? Maybe. Ossoff might not be well suited for such a task. But Democrats are desperate for leaders and feel that the senator has pierced the party\u2019s gloom like a beam of warm light. (Ossoff, through a spokesperson, declined an interview for this story.)Outside the Georgia Theatre in Athens, Judith McWillie struggled to explain how she felt about her senator. The retired professor sighed, blinked, and sighed some more, like a computer malfunctioning after being assigned too many tasks. But then, at last, she smiled a dreamy smile. \u201cIt\u2019s like taking a clean shower to hear these things spoken so clearly,\u201d she told me. She hadn\u2019t even gotten to see the senator in person\u2014the rally was so packed that she\u2019d had to watch on a screen from the taqueria next door. Disappointing. But she\u2019d seen what she needed to see. \u201cI\u2019ve been waiting for the Democrats to do that for 15 years.\u201dOssoff is expected to win his reelection bid in November against his Republican opponent. But it\u2019s still not clear that the senator would be able to go beyond scripted zingers if he decides to campaign for higher office.It\u2019s obvious at an Ossoff event that the senator once worked as a documentary filmmaker. His rallies have an almost cinematic quality\u2014professional lighting, well-dispersed signs with stylish fonts and vivid colors, plenty of American-flag bunting. Every clip the campaign releases after a rally is perfectly cropped for social media, and some photos are angled upward to show the senator looking out over the crowd, his sharp jawline front and center. (This framing has the added benefit of being recyclable for another, perhaps higher-profile, campaign down the line.)In Athens, the press risers were, much to the chagrin of some attendees, right in the middle of the crowd. Ossoff himself stood on a part of the stage that jutted toward the audience. Behind him, his team had assembled a diverse display of good-looking young people. During his speech, the crowd was treated to language equal parts poetic and biting. On Iran: \u201cWe sink in the quicksand of reckless war.\u201d On President Trump: \u201cOur task is not just to contain his wickedness but to cure the rot that gave rise to it.\u201d The current president is \u201cthe broken old man,\u201d and Ossoff\u2019s opponent, Republican Representative Mike Collins, is \u201ca crumbling little bigot.\u201d In a few short lines, Ossoff managed to squeeze in virtually every Democratic critique of Trump and his administration: \u201cThey doubled your insurance premiums and slashed Medicaid to cut taxes for their corporate donors and the ultrarich. They made you pay more for everything. They lied us into war and spent most of the last year covering up for the world\u2019s most famous pedophile.\u201dOssoff is eager to highlight and explain to voters the Trump family\u2019s alleged state-sponsored enrichment schemes, and concluded for the Athens audience that \u201cit pays to be a Trump, especially when the whole world knows Daddy\u2019s a crook.\u201d Days after a former Anthropic researcher warned that artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity, Ossoff introduced a new line on AI, arguing that Trump has too many investments with tech companies to ever regulate them. \u201cA capable president would move swiftly to secure and reassure the American people, rush inspectors into frontier labs, fortify the nation against bioterrorism,\u201d he said. \u201cBut President Trump is compromised.\u201dRead: The only thing capable of uniting Bernie and BannonDuring Ossoff\u2019s speeches, he lays out the several endorsements he\u2019s received from Georgia Republicans who commend his office\u2019s constituent services. Then, in a call for national unity, he hits the crowd with an \u201ce pluribus unum,\u201d and everyone goes bananas.Nicole Craine for The AtlanticSome progressives believe that Ossoff is too moderate\u2014or worse, too generic. They argue that his appeal does not go much further than his generally pleasing aura. In fact, I have never attended a political rally where a candidate\u2019s supporters seemed quite so unable to articulate a reason for their support. A couple of attendees cited Ossoff\u2019s push for affordable insulin and his work preventing child trafficking. But mostly, their compliments were vague. \u201cI couldn\u2019t specify anything,\u201d one woman told me before the rally, even though she\u2019d arrived early enough to press right up against the barricade. \u201cHe votes the way I want him to,\u201d another person said.This changed after Ossoff finished speaking, when people sounded totally stunned. \u201cHe\u2019s gonna be a star!\u201d one woman exclaimed to her friend as they left the theater. Other attendees used words such as inspiring, articulate, and refreshing. Older voters heard the echoes of another well-spoken young Democrat. \u201cJon has the charisma that Kennedy had,\u201d Susan Cartwright, a retiree from Athens, told me.Ossoff events are a warm bath for Democrats because they represent exactly what they\u2019ve been demanding since Trump\u2019s reelection: a leader who demonstrates some mettle and who, by virtue of his youth, can communicate a vigorous, anti-Trump message using modern methods. Other Democrats \u201cwill take a term paper to a gun fight,\u201d Fred Hicks, a Democratic strategist based in Georgia, told me. But Ossoff \u201cis able to position things in sound bites and make complex ideas very simple.\u201dHis looks also seem to help. \u201cHe\u2019s gorgeous,\u201d one elderly woman told me at the rally, adding, conspiratorially, \u201cYou know some people are calling him \u2018Senator My Boo.\u2019\u201dThe task of stopping Senator My Boo has fallen to Mike Collins, but the situation doesn\u2019t look promising for the Republican nominee. It\u2019s shaping up to be a good year nationally for Democrats, and in Georgia, Ossoff has the advantage of incumbency. Collins is also facing a triumvirate of controversies that would be bad enough on their own but together amount to campaign poison: A former staffer for Collins posted a swastika and a photo of himself in a Ku Klux Klan\u2013style robe on social media. Collins\u2019s son-in-law, a social-media influencer, has shared white-nationalist rhetoric and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. To top it off, the House Ethics Committee is investigating Collins for allegedly misusing taxpayer funds. \u201cMike Collins is going to get his teeth kicked in; it\u2019s just a matter of how many teeth,\u201d a state Republican consultant, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity, told me. \u201cThere\u2019s nobody here who thinks he has a chance.\u201d Meyer Siegfried, a spokesperson for the Collins campaign, dismissed this analysis as \u201ca fantasy pushed by anonymous operatives captured by the Ossoff hype machine.\u201d Georgia, he added, \u201cremains a serious battleground.\u201dIt seems obvious that Ossoff isn\u2019t merely hoping to beat Collins. He\u2019s hoping to win so big that his tide lifts all the other Democratic boats in Georgia\u2014with the helpful side effect of demonstrating to his party that he enjoys broad appeal in a state that voted for Trump in 2024.Some Democrats are predicting\u2014or perhaps manifesting\u2014that if he wins in November, Ossoff will turn immediately toward a bigger project: running for president in 2028. Ossoff has repeatedly denied that he is interested in doing this. If he won, he\u2019d have to give up his hard-fought Senate seat, which, if Georgia elects a Republican governor this year, would be politically perilous for Democrats. Ossoff, who has two daughters under the age of 5, is also very protective of his family life.But national Democrats don\u2019t care much about these caveats, and many consultants can\u2019t wait to draft him into the 2028 race\u2014although none wanted to engage in such speculation on the record. One referred to him as an \u201cS-tier\u201d presidential candidate. On the prediction-market platform Kalshi, Ossoff\u2019s odds of winning the 2028 nomination are higher than any Democrat\u2019s.Nicole Craine for The AtlanticThe people at the Athens rally were certainly keen on the possibility.\u00a0 Similarly pugnacious candidates, such as Gavin Newsom, \u201chave a lot of negativity that follows them around,\u201d Cartwright said. But Ossoff \u201cwould be one of the best choices we could have.\u201d Deborah Dykstra, a 68-year-old from Athens, slapped my arm excitedly when I suggested that her senator might run for president. \u201cHe\u2019s young; he\u2019s intelligent,\u201d she said. \u201cI heard him speak when Kamala was in Atlanta, and I liked listening to what he was saying better.\u201dRead: Gavin Newsom would rather be wrong than weakIt\u2019s not entirely clear that Ossoff would be good at running for president. Like Obama, the Georgia senator is confident onstage reading from a teleprompter. Unlike Obama, Ossoff has yet to prove that he\u2019s entirely comfortable speaking off-the-cuff. In interviews, he rarely seems willing to let down his guard. Asked for his favorite swear word in a conversation with The Bulwark\u2019s Tim Miller, who tends toward playful interviews, Ossoff would not be drawn in. \u201cThat\u2019s just one of those private questions,\u201d Ossoff said. The man is consistent. In a 2012 tweet, Ossoff wrote that he\u2019d thought twice about sharing an explicit song because \u201cI don\u2019t want someone to ask why I linked to profanity in 15 yrs.\u201d He similarly avoids playing along when TMZ reporters ask silly questions on Capitol Hill. You might call it being relentlessly on-message. \u201cHe\u2019s always been serious,\u201d Hicks, the Democratic strategist, said. \u201cHe would say the moment we\u2019re in requires a little gravity.\u201dBut, as the former Obama adviser David Axelrod once said, presidential campaigns \u201care like an MRI for the soul.\u201d They require something more than straightforward speech-making: an ability to sit down with Joe Rogan for a three-hour, stream-of-consciousness interview, for example. Or, as the old political adage goes, an unbuttoned ease that makes voters want to pull up beside them at the bar.Perhaps Jon Ossoff has yet to fully reveal himself. His supporters in Georgia predict that he will. \u201cI get the feeling, too, that there\u2019s a lot more even coming from Ossoff,\u201d McWillie, the retired professor, said. \u201cHe\u2019s doing it carefully, in stages, instead of trying to just throw everything out there all at once.\u201d The 2028 presidential primary could hinge on whether the senator learns how to go off script." ], "output": "readability", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789740910.396482", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-18T16:19:05.454840+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "screenshot": [], "singlefile": [], "title": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/jon-ossoff-midterms-senate-georgia/688663/" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-18T16:19:05.446612+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "Jon Ossoff Is Doing Something Different - The Atlantic", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789740910.396482", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-18T16:19:05.414438+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "wget": [ { "cmd": [ "wget", "--no-verbose", "--adjust-extension", "--convert-links", "--force-directories", "--span-hosts", "--no-parent", "-e", "robots=off", "--reject=js,mjs,woff,woff2,ttf,otf,eot,mp4,m4v,mov,webm,ogv,mkv,avi,flv", "--timeout=120", "--restrict-file-names=windows", "--page-requisites", "--user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) wget/GNU Wget 1.21.3", "--compression=auto", "--timestamping", "https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/jon-ossoff-midterms-senate-georgia/688663/" ], "cmd_version": "GNU Wget 1.21.3", "end_ts": "2026-09-18T16:19:05.398346+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/jon-ossoff-midterms-senate-georgia/688663/index.html", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789740910.396482", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-18T16:18:59.576515+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ] }, "icons": null, "is_archived": true, "is_static": false, "latest": { "archive_org": null, "dom": null, "favicon": "favicon.ico", "git": null, "media": null, "pdf": null, "screenshot": null, "singlefile": null, "title": "Jon Ossoff Is Doing Something Different - The Atlantic", "warc": null, "wget": "www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/jon-ossoff-midterms-senate-georgia/688663/index.html" }, "link_dir": "/data/archive/1789740910.396482", "newest_archive_date": "2026-09-18T16:19:07.313323+00:00", "num_failures": 0, "num_outputs": 6, "oldest_archive_date": "2026-09-18T16:18:58.734377+00:00", "path": "/politics/2026/09/jon-ossoff-midterms-senate-georgia/688663/", "schema": "Link", "scheme": "https", "snapshot_id": "25119f19-6b59-4add-a243-799eecae9567", "sources": [ "/data/sources/1789740910-import.txt" ], "tags": ",war-wiki,pool,drudge", "tags_str": "war-wiki,pool,drudge", "timestamp": "1789740910.396482", "title": "Jon Ossoff Is Doing Something Different - The Atlantic", "updated": "2026-09-18T16:18:58.734229+00:00", "updated_date": "2026-09-18 16:18", "url": "https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/jon-ossoff-midterms-senate-georgia/688663/" }