Looking for a new "Obama": Will the Jewish star bring the Democrats back from the desert?
Progressives love him for his populist economic messages, the Democratic establishment loves him because he avoids extreme statements: Senator Jon Ossoff from Georgia is young, photogenic, and Jewish, and his attitude toward Israel ranges from support to criticism. In the polls, he is already standing out as a "rockstar."
Even Donald Trump's greatest haters agree that he has developed political instincts. Therefore, if Trump spends a lot of time trying to insult a certain politician, it can be assumed that he identifies a danger. The fact that in the last month Trump has been directing more and more attention to Jon Ossoff is clear proof of the rise of the 39-year-old Jewish senator from Georgia, who is increasingly becoming the new hope of the Democratic Party — and a prominent name on the stock market of potential candidates in the 2028 presidential election.
Democrats have been looking for the "new Barack Obama" for more than a decade. Every public appearance by Obama reminds them how far the current talent pool in the party is from the political capabilities of the first black president. Ossoff is the new candidate for the successor role, and every time Trump calls him a "failed and pathetic Democratic senator, a joke in Washington, an idiot that no one knows who he is," the Democrats feel that he may be the man who will bring them back from the desert. When last week at a hearing in Congress Ossoff grilled Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on the war in Iran, it seemed that even the last of the Democrats were smitten.
In the midterm elections in November, Ossoff will run for another term in the Senate against the Republican, Mike Collins. Georgia has become a swing state, but it still leans Republican. The assessment was that the race between Ossoff and Collins would be one of the closest, but about three months before the election, polls give Ossoff an advantage of between 9% and 13%. This is happening because Ossoff is proving to be a very talented politician. His speeches are impressive and serious and still generate viral content. He homes in on the message that "Trump is corrupt and the Trump family is making millions from the presidency — while you citizens cannot go to the doctor." The surge in support for him was recorded after he said in a campaign speech: "Our country is run by the 'Jeffrey Epstein class.' They are exactly the same elites they pretend to hate."
Perhaps his greatest success is that it seems that all factions of the Democratic Party, which is in a civil war between its moderate camp and the deep left that has strengthened dramatically in the primaries in recent weeks, like him: progressives love his populist and anti-corporate economic messages, moderates love that he avoids entering minefields that they believe alienate swing voters, and both like the fact that he is young and also — there is no point in pretending it doesn't affect — a handsome man.
Ossoff's positions on foreign policy are slightly to the left of the Democratic establishment, but still far from the far left. He has repeatedly declared support for Israel and a commitment to its security, but knows that even moderate Democrats oppose the Netanyahu government and the policy in Gaza. He voted a year ago in favor of a resolution to block the sale of certain weapons to Israel, and was one of the first Jews in Congress to define the scale of the harm to civilians in Gaza as a "moral failure."
In recent weeks, American pollsters have begun adding Ossoff's name to their questions, and a recent poll by the "Emerson Institute" placed him third when examining the preferred candidates for Democrats in the future primaries for the 2028 presidential election: he received 13%, like the progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, while in second place is California Governor Gavin Newsom with 17% and in first place is former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, who received 19% in the poll and is also perceived as someone who may run as the "new Obama."
At least for now, Ossoff claims that he has "zero interest in running for president," but all that may change if he wins the midterm elections in November for another term in the Senate from Georgia — and especially if it is by a convincing margin, in a state that is considered a swing state. After all, two years before the 2008 election, Barack Obama also swore that he did not intend to run.
