This is a follow-on to my post from the other day as well as to some back and forth in the comments with valued commenter John S. of a post from yesterday.
In my previous post, I pointed out how Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia was, in my view, hitting all the right notes and tying them all together. I wrote:
It will be a tough, hard-fought race. Ossoff knows it will take a disciplined campaign with “breakthrough” messaging for him to win reelection.
So what is he talking about on the stump? See my opening sentence: corruption, authoritarianism, voting suppression, inequality, legalized bribery, personal grifting, lack of accountability & consequences for “elites”, economic misery, healthcare, and a rigged, broken system.
Here was Ossoff yesterday on the stump:
Jon Ossoff with a TRUTH about who it is Republicans represent.
— Bill Madden (@maddenifico.bsky.social) 2026-04-28T02:03:55.059Z
It’s worth writing down the words in that clip (bold emphasis mine).
“And see, this is why nothing works for ordinary people. It’s not because of woke college kids or trans students, or because there are interracial couples in cereal commercials. It’s because the people’s elected representatives don’t represent the people. They represent the donors. And that corruption is why they just defunded nursing homes to cut taxes for the rich. Corruption is why you pay a fortune for prescriptions. Corruption i why your insurance claim keeps getting denies. Corruption is why hedge funds get to buy up all the houses in your neighborhood driving you out of the market. And then your corporate landlord ignores your calls during a gas leak. Corruption is why that ambulance costs $3,000 after you just had to get your choking toddler to the hospital.
So Trump promised to attack a broken system. I get it. Ripe target. But here’s the thing: he’s a crook, and a con man, and he wants to be a king. Yes, the system really is rigged, but Trump’s not un-rigging it, he’s re-rigging it for himself.
Savannah, trust me when I tell you: if we live up to our obligations as citizens, we will overcome this [Savannah].
We will. We will.”
Let me be clear. I am not a total Ossoff fan-boy. He supports crypto which I believe is a full-on scam which mainly benefits criminals and allows for anonymous donations to bribery of public officials.
But I’m not going to quibble right now. This is masterful. Ossoff is playing offense on home-field. He is both implicitly and explicitly tying together disparate issues into one big connective tissue: money in politics, elites being treated differently, corruption, unaffordability (in healthcare and housing)
Contrast that with Hakeem Jeffries totally timid, defensive, and totally unnecessary and remarks on potential impeachment (as so ably pointed out by Mister Mix in his post this morning).
In the comments to my post yesterday titled: Every Accusation is a Confession,, commenter John S. and I had a short back and forth about Dana Bash’s interview with Jamie Raskin (let me also be clear here on how I feel about Raskin: he is one of the unsung heroes of our country and approaching national treasure status. Clear enough?)
Here is the meat of the interview:
Raskin’s response was measured and appropriate and meaningful. Yet, IMHO, he was still playing defense, not offense. As I wrote yesterday, “…the danger lies not in proactively calling them [extreme threats to democracy] out, but in passively not doing so. I’m pretty sure history bears me out on that. Raskin should have immediately (and more passionately) turned the question back on Bash and pointed out that Trump's attacks are vile/ad hominem/personal while Dems are based on the collective future of our gov't and way of life (to his credit, Raskin did address the second part of that last sentence, just not the first).
More Ossoff, less Jeffries. More passionate offense, less reasoned defense. More proactively connecting it all together, less issue-by-issue response.
Again, Ossoff is showing us the way.
Roar, by Katy Perry
