It was a punch delivered in Atlanta on Sunday and felt all the way in Washington, smooth and fluid, like one of Sugar Ray Robinson’s left hooks or Muhammad Ali’s left jabs. With one word — actually, one name: Natalie — Sen. Jon Ossoff stunned the Trump White House with a blow they didn’t see coming and caused the rest of the country to talk about what they had just witnessed.

“So [Trump] doesn’t want to do this job,” Ossoff, who is running for reelection in Georgia, said at a campaign event on Sunday. “He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”

As special assistant to the president, 35-year-old Natalie Harp follows Trump everywhere: on Marine One, Air Force One, even on the links. She was also one of the chosen few selected to join Trump on a separate plane — and the catering truck that carried him to it — when he recently abandoned returning to the U.S. from Turkey on Air Force One after reportedly receiving threats from Iran. Platinum blonde and attractive in a Fox News sort of way, she is responsible for managing the president’s volatile moods and perhaps even his health, which she accomplishes in part by leaving him letters signed “With all my heart, Natalie.” Harp will never leave him, Trump has boasted, according to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan in “Regime Change,” even as others in the administration will inevitably depart for greener, more lucrative pastures. 

While all of official Washington knew Harp’s name, few outside the Beltway did. That has now changed. 

Following Ossoff’s speech, White House communications director Steven Cheung was beside himself, referring to the senator as “Jackoff Jon” and “the biggest cuck loser in politics.” Trump called him Pee-wee Herman — successfully, this time. (In a recent speech, the president had mangled the character’s name, referring to him as “Pinky Herman.”) 

The fury and volume of the White House’s reaction to one sentence in the senator’s speech was telling. He obviously hit a nerve, which revealed there was, in fact, a story there waiting to be told. But it also proved that Ossoff knows what he’s doing. And more than that, he’s good at it.

In this case, the “it” is the art of burning and baiting, a gift many people just tuning into the Georgia Senate race might be surprised to associate with the earnest 39-year-old, who is known in the Senate for his reserved demeanor, for keeping his head down and doing the work. 

The right was predictably appalled, with the likes of CNN pundit Scott Jennings and podcaster Megyn Kelly crying foul, accusing Ossoff of misogyny and insinuating adultery between the president and Harp. (Others have pointed out that given Trump’s well documented track record of sexual liaisons, the speculation was already alive.)

But even former Obama adviser David Axelrod seemed shocked by Ossoff’s remarks, chiding him on X for invoking Harp, calling it “gratuitous and unnecessary.” The name drop likely “juiced the virality” of his comment, he wrote, “Probably thrilled some in the base, who figured it was just giving Trump a taste of his own nasty medicine. But they distracted and detracted from the power of the message.”

Axelrod might have had a point — in 2014. His words, unfortunately, belong to another time, before Trump wrung the last drops of decorum from our politics. Now, 12 years and many political lifetimes later, they read as quaint and out-of-touch, like a grandfather telling his grandson to never contradict his betters. They also ignore the strategy and skill that Ossoff brought to the task.

What sets the senator apart from others, including many likely 2028 contenders who troll Trump, is that he brings a forensic craft to his burn-and-bait and, from a writer’s perspective, the beauty of construction. (Ossoff has often said he writes his own speeches.) Overlooked in his comments was an Easter egg hiding in plain sight: his use of “their” in reference to Air Force One. As a plural possessive, the usage implies ownership — Trump wants to “travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace” — a subtle and canny construction that underscored questions about why Trump needs Harp and the recent scandal involving Air Force One. 

By cleverly placing the reference in the middle of a substantive critique of Trump’s behavior in office, Ossoff also ensured that the clip would be played in full, reminding viewers digesting it on social media and cable news alike about a spate of serious issues: the reported suicide attempts and appalling conditions of America’s sailor aboard the USS Lincoln, the nation’s dwindling supply of munitions and oil reserves, concerns about the aging president’s physical health, allegations of corruption by Trump and his family, the rushed construction of the massively unpopular White House ballroom and the gift of a plane from a foreign prince that was clearly designed to curry favor.

The brief mention of Harp in Ossoff’s speech led to a round of victory laps on MS NOW — Jen Psaki on Monday, Lawrence O’Donnell on Tuesday — that afforded the senator the opportunity to take his message to Democrats nationwide and, most likely, add to his campaign coffers. 

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When asked by O’Donnell about his comments, he offered another burn: “Apparently, in the White House, the truth hurts.” That’s all. Then he pivoted to his real message. “They have lied us into war after promising peace,” he said. “They’ve driven inflation skyrocketing, thrown people off their health insurance, doubled health insurance premiums for more than a million Georgians after they promised to bring down prices on day one.”

From there he brought it home: “And the president’s done so, not just enabled by hangers-on and sycophants inside the White House, but also Republicans in Congress who have enabled him at every turn, and one of them is Congressman Mike Collins here in Georgia. The pro-war, pro-tariff, pro-cutting-your-healthcare, bigot congressman, Trump puppet who’s running for the U.S. Senate.”

But Ossoff is not just baiting the White House, or even Collins, in these appearances and remarks. He’s also enticing voters to join his campaign. “This is Georgia,” he reminded viewers during his interview with O’Donnell. “This is the most competitive battleground state in the country . . . I guarantee that within weeks the polling will be within the margin of error, and there is no path back to the Senate majority without winning this race in Georgia.” (The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has rated the race as “Lean Democratic.”) He then proceeded to invite people to donate by telephone — hey, he knows the primary audience for cable news is older voters — or using his website.

In recent months, Ossoff’s skill on the stump has stoked speculation about his aspirations for 2028. Those have led to a series of staunch denials. “I have zero interest in running for president in 2028,” he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in June, likening the talk to “fantasy football” that takes attention from the immediate task at hand: winning a Democratic Senate majority. But a poll released today by Emerson College shows his viability and will no doubt increase the chatter about a potential presidential bid. In hypothetical matchups, Ossoff defeats Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio by five and three points respectively.

There is ample evidence to believe Ossoff’s rebuffs that he might prefer his home in Atlanta to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. As Puck’s Leigh Ann Caldwell recently observed, he is seen as quiet and studious in the Senate, someone who rarely attends Washington social functions, who is professorial by nature. Then there’s the simple fact that he’s a politician, and ambitions for higher office are in his blood; after all, they are what propelled him to the Senate, and they might be part of what is taking him to the Hamptons this weekend on a fundraising swing. 

The qualities that Caldwell described are also ones that were associated with another senator whose oratory attracted attention: Barack Obama. But the comparisons don’t end there. Whether by intention or accident — and few things are by accident in politics — Ossoff is swiftly turning into the Obama of this election cycle by channeling at least four attributes that will hold a premium in 2028: youth, vitality, a demonstrated willingness to fight and having an aspirational message. 

Ossoff is wisely trying to harness the increased attention and direct it toward his immediate future: the midterms. Without a win in November, any presidential ambitions, whether real or projected, will be harder. But like it or not, he must learn to reckon with the heightened expectations and speculation that comes with simply being good at his current job.

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Francesca Hong’s narrow loss in Tuesday’s Wisconsin Democratic primary for governor has been billed as a setback for progressives following a string of high-profile wins. A “stunning loss,” the New York Times proclaimed on Wednesday. POLITICO declared the democratic socialist’s defeat by David Crowley, a mainstream Democrat and the Milwaukee County executive, “is undercutting the narrative of an emerging insurgency.” Both publications agreed the result exposed “the limits of the left” and its power.

In fact, what the race revealed were the weaknesses and limitations of an ineffective candidate who would have almost certainly flamed out in the general election. Democrats across the political spectrum, and especially progressives, should all be breathing a sigh of relief at her defeat.

Hong had a compelling story. The child of South Korean immigrants, she has confronted the high cost of college — she was once forced to drop out to find work — and has experienced financial hardship. As a single mother and service-industry worker, Hong carries relatable and valuable lived experience that is often missing from the halls of state and federal government.

The problem was that the 37-year-old assemblywoman couldn’t quite manage to assemble a compelling narrative from all those memorable, resonant elements. At nearly every turn, she allowed herself to be defined: as a well intentioned candidate with some wacky views (“Abolish the Senate,” anyone?); as a provocateur who, to quote one Wisconsin voter, was “sort of inviting some controversies”; as being, in the words of the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s Democratic chair, “willing to sell out the Jews of Wisconsin for a few bucks”; as the contender most likely to prevail in a primary that sometimes seemed like a Marx Brothers comedy, with candidates dropping out of (and, in the case of Crowley, reentering) the race according to shifting fortunes.

Hong was never fully in control of her own narrative. By the end, and by her own hand, she was reduced to being a joyless hater of holidays and an avowed enemy of All Things Fun.

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Her interviews didn’t help. While Hong described herself as a “hustler” in a July interview with MS NOW’s Antonia Hylton, the energy she gave off was anything but. She appeared out of her element, far too hesitant even in the friendly environment afforded by the liberal-oriented network, and her performance set the stage for a test she was bound to fail when it came three weeks later. In an appearance on Fox News, Hong withered under host Dana Perino’s questioning about how much her views aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America platform and her provocative social media history, which included calls to “[d]efund then abolish” the police.

Worse were Hong’s attempts to confront her apparent antipathy toward holidays including Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, Fourth of July and even Halloween that appeared on her unscrubbed X account. Asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins about her Nov. 16, 2020, call to “cancel Thanksgiving,” Hong passed up the chance to disavow the tweet and instead talked about how she cooked a Thanksgiving meal at 16. Two days later, she told POLITICO’s Irie Sentner that it was her “favorite holiday” while admitting, “I’m kind of a curmudgeon when it comes to holidays in general.”

Hong might as well have changed her campaign slogan to I HATE FUN. It’s a tale as old as Dickens: No one likes a Scrooge.

A more adept progressive, such as New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, would have easily batted away the questions. Ocasio-Cortez, in fact, did just that during an appearance on ABC News’ “This Week” two days before the primary. When host Jonathan Karl asked her about Hong’s social media history and past positions, Ocasio-Cortez laughed it off. 

“I have a local city councilman that has this saying that ‘Woke 1 was crazy,’” she said of Hong’s tweets, some of which came during the Covid-19 pandemic. “And I think that what’s important is that we have to assess what a candidate is saying now.” Describing some of the ideas raised during this time as useful, Ocasio-Cortez said, “during lockdown, of course — rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.”

The congresswoman’s response demonstrated an agility and awareness that Hong clearly lacks, something that was surely a factor in Ocasio-Cortez’s decision to not endorse her fellow democratic socialist. When asked by Karl, she said she was focused on “winning back the Congress, winning back the House and positioning ourselves to have the best chance possible to win the Senate.”

But the diss was notable — and shrewd. For the left to succeed, Ocasio-Cortez knows they must move beyond functioning as scolds. Dourness rarely plays well in politics, and it’s a particularly unbecoming quality in progressives, who can sometimes come off as humorless. The most electable progressives are instead happy warriors, a quality Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani have in spades.

Witness Madmani’s recent conversation with the New York Times’ Lulu Garcia-Navarro. In a telling exchange, Garcia-Navarro asked the mayor about traits that make a good politician, and then she pointed to his smile and innate optimism. He replied, “You are showing something to the world about who you are, what you’re for, how it makes you feel, and I think oftentimes it feels like politicians are blank canvasses, and everyone else is supposed to paint them in. I think it’s time to show people ‘This is whom I am. Maybe you don’t like it, maybe you do like it. But this is me.'”

Despite her efforts and compelling personal story, Francesca Hong allowed everyone else to paint her in, and had she prevailed in the primary, it would have likely doomed her in November. She was an imperfect messenger for the left, and instead of being a setback, her loss on Tuesday was a gift to progressives.

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On Wednesday morning, shortly after Dr. Abdul El-Sayed won the hotly contested Michigan Democratic Senate primary in a slender victory, the Republican Party let slip the dogs of war. Barely 15 minutes after the Associated Press called the race for the unabashed progressive and first-time candidate for federal office over the centrist Rep. Haley Stevens, Donald Trump was crowing on Truth Social that the 41-year-old El-Sayed’s win was “great news for the Republican Party.” The newly minted Democratic nominee, he wrote, is “a Communist loser who hates Jews and Israel.”

As he has for 10 years, the president set the tone for the rest of the GOP. 

By the noon hour, the National Republican Senatorial Committee had fired off an attack ad that led with Islamophobia and recalled the attempts from some quarters to define a certain Illinois senator who carried the name Barack Hussein Obama. “Abdulrohman Mohamed El-Sayed,” the ad began, making a point to use the candidate’s full name, an obvious move to launch the process of otherizing him to voters in Michigan and across the country, “[is] the most radical Senate candidate in America.”

But the day’s vilest moment came three hours later when Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who has always demonstrated a willingness to go there, invoked the T-word in a brief interview as he boarded an elevator after voting to confirm Dr. Erica Schwartz, Trump’s controversial nominee to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

“The guy was basically a cheerleader for 9/11,” Tuberville told me, linking El-Sayed to a comment made by the popular far-left streamer Hasan Piker, with whom the candidate campaigned, that “America deserved 9/11.” (When asked in April by POLITICO about Piker’s remarks, El-Sayed characterized the question as a “gotcha game” and said “I’m not here to disavow people’s views”; Piker later apologized for the comments, calling them “inappropriate,” “messed up” and a failed attempt at satire.) “I mean, come on,” Tuberville continued, “the country’s changed, but it hasn’t changed this much to put people in [office] that are basically terrorists.”

When I asked if he was calling El-Sayed a terrorist, the senator replied, “I say he’s got the ability to become one.”

Tuberville has the political incentive to make such inflammatory remarks; they will play well to Republicans in Alabama, where he is running for governor, and he has no grand designs on national office. But they and the GOP’s larger response to El-Sayed’s win reflect another emotion that is running throughout the party. Although Republicans got the Democratic opponent they professed to want for former Rep. Mike Rogers, who lost a Senate race to Elissa Slotkin in 2024 only by the thinnest of margins, they are also scared — and with good reason.

El-Sayed has got game. When I approached his campaign for comment on Tuberville’s remarks, I was directed to an exchange he had on Wednesday night with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, in which he addressed the Republican onslaught. 

“There are people like J.D. Vance or Donald Trump or Mike Rogers, who want to define America as being too small to include some kinds of people, and they point to my name, they point to my faith, they try to insinuate that somehow I’m less American because of those things,” El-Sayed said. “They want America to be small. I believe that America is big. It’s open-minded. It’s big-hearted. It can include any of us, regardless of how we pray, regardless of where our families come from, regardless of who we love or how we identify. That’s the America we’re building. And I think America, in Michigan in particular, has an opportunity to remind us just how big we are.”

Although El-Sayed has never run for federal office, these are not the words of a political novice. He is a gifted communicator, able both to make open-hearted, aspirational appeals and channel anger at billionaires and elites, a needle Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., for all of his influence on the Democratic Party, has never quite been able to thread. 

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But unlike eloquent politicians known to be showhorses, enjoying the social media clips from their media hits, El-Sayed is a workhorse, and this combination makes him formidable. One reason for his primary win is that he simply outworked Stevens, visiting over 110 cities, according to his campaign, holding over 500 public events and, in the process, building a genuine movement. This tenacity, along with rallying cries of “Medicare for All” and getting money out of politics, helped him overcome the opposition of the Democratic establishment and over $60 million in spending by super PACs supporting Stevens. 

Nevertheless, after the race was called for El-Sayed, the Democratic Party quickly coalesced behind him and he was reportedly fielding calls from former Vice President Kamala Harris, former Transportation Secretary — and Michigan voter — Pete Buttigieg and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. 

The stakes are high. Polls taken before the primary showed El-Sayed trailing Rogers by a larger margin than Stevens. Democratic control of the Senate runs through Michigan, and as many have pointed out, El-Sayed’s win has teed up a first-of-its-kind test: whether a progressive can win in a swing state that narrowly voted for Trump in 2016, went for Biden four years later and returned to Trump in 2024. El-Sayed will need to be even more nimble than he already is and avoid giving the GOP talking points.

Despite generous overtures to Stevens and assurances to the Jewish community El-Sayed made in remarks on Wednesday morning after the race was called, there are intraparty divisions left to heal. He must set to work convincing centrist and moderate Democrats, Black voters in urban areas and suburban voters, all of which Stevens carried, as well as disaffected independents, that he is worthy of their vote. The race will be tough, but it is winnable, even as he continues to face GOP efforts to define him on their terms.

Responding to a reporter who asked about how Republicans are deploying his name in their attacks, El-Sayed said, “That’s the only play they got.”

Whether that’s true or not, between now and November, we’ll see if it works.

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Were she to run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, Kamala Harris would enter the race with formidable advantages. Thanks to four years as vice president and two presidential bids, her name identification is universal, and she has demonstrated the ability to raise mounds of money. But she would not clear the field. 

The list of possible contenders for the Democratic nomination is a mile long and includes governors (California’s Gavin Newsom, Kentucky’s Andy Beshear, Maryland’s Wes Moore, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro and Illinois’ J.B. Pritzker), lawmakers (Arizona Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and California Rep. Ro Khanna), former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, to name a few. In an Emerson College poll released July 23, Harris came in fifth with 8%, trailing Buttigieg (19%), Newsom (17%), Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff (13%) and Ocasio-Cortez (13%). 

But as she weighs a third presidential bid, Harris stands to face a bigger and more formidable opponent: herself.

Harris was done dirty by the Biden White House. It was nothing short of political malpractice to handicap and undercut a loyal veep who, according to actuarial tables, could have easily been elevated to the Oval Office in the event of the aging president’s death. (Considering Joe Biden’s post-presidency diagnosis of aggressive metastatic cancer, his staff’s treatment of Harris looks even more outrageous in hindsight.) This was particularly true because, after enduring brutal press cycles in her first two years as vice president, Harris ended up becoming a secret weapon of sorts for Biden, passionate and nimble on the stump in defending reproductive rights in the wake of the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, and making skillful strides on the world stage.

But if she was not set up for success by the administration while in office, Harris now appears to be falling into a trap of her own making, even as she is “holding lengthy, closed-door meetings” with progressive activists and groups.

In a recent New York magazine feature, a supporter of the vice president — identified as someone “who had recently spoken with her and came away convinced [she] is running in 2028” — inadvertently revealed what, if accurate, looks likely to be her Achilles’ heel. “She is looking for where the wave is going and is determined to ride it,” they said.

Left unsaid was that this is what Harris has long been accused of doing — again and again. 

There’s a balance every politician must strike: retaining one’s authenticity while remaining open to recalibrating policy positions in response to new evidence or simply evolving, or to match shifts in the public mood. Some, like Biden, are particularly skilled at this. But charges of flip-flopping cling to other politicians like barnacles on a sailboat, becoming a drag on their campaigns and threatening long-term structural damage to their brand.

This is where Harris is at right now. Despite her national profile, there remains a nagging suspicion that she lacks an internal compass and the courage of her convictions. Since she was first elected to public office as San Francisco district attorney in 2003, she has sometimes shifted positions according to which rung of the political ladder she was climbing. 

As the junior senator from California, a progressive state, Harris was vocal in her support for Medicare for All. Famously, in a June 2019 Democratic presidential primary debate, she raised her hand when the moderator asked candidates if they would support eliminating private insurance. Her campaign quickly attempted to walk back her response, and she began softening her position by releasing a plan that called for expanding access to Medicare while maintaining private insurance options. As Biden’s running mate, she supported his position of expanding the Affordable Care Act. 

Harris’ shifts on healthcare, while anathema to some progressives, are easier to justify: Her core value of wanting universal healthcare didn’t change, she might explain, only her approach did. But her shift on fracking is much harder to square.

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During her 2020 presidential bid, Harris expressed support for an outright ban on fracking, and she brought along a record as California attorney general of investigating oil companies for environmental abuses. But in the face of heat from Donald Trump and Republicans, and needing to put Pennsylvania in the Democratic column on election night, Harris clumsily reversed her position while claiming her “values have not changed” and that she was “seeking consensus.” The explanation didn’t seem to ring true for many voters, and she lost Pennsylvania to Trump by 1.7%.

There have been other policy reversals as well, ranging from the death penalty and cash bail to marijuana and immigration, which have left her vulnerable to Republican attacks and made some Democrats wary. 

The New York magazine story indicated that Harris was blaming political consultants for her loss in 2024. “Her mindset is that I should have won,” a supporter told the outlet, “and I am going to do it my way because my way would have won, and it was all these consultants that were telling me to take this position or that position, and it was their fault.”

The problem is that this mindset further adds to the perception of Harris as a political opportunist, and should she eventually enter the primary, it will raise questions about her judgment and management that she will have to confront.

The Democratic Party has changed in the two years since her presidential campaign. The ideological fissures are more apparent, with democratic socialist candidates winning primaries — and elections, in the case of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whom Harris notably called in June — and nearly two years into the Trump’s second term, the party has become much more restive and angry.

For 2028, Democrats aren’t wanting someone who is searching for a wave to ride to victory. They want someone to instead be that wave.

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When you’re allegedly throwing phones at the desks of junior aides, there’s a problem that goes deeper than unmanaged anger. 

According to a damning story published in Sunday’s New York Times, embattled Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin has descended into rage, fear, isolation and — according to his own supporters — ”a growing sense of paranoia” about his tenure atop the party. 

Elected by DNC membership in February 2025 after a fractious race, Martin nonetheless took office with high expectations, seen as someone in the mold of former chair Howard Dean who would rebuild the party and devise a strategy to, if not win back rural voters, then at least mitigate Democratic losses. Instead, Martin’s tenure has been an ongoing series of fumbles, including a high-profile feud with party activist David Hogg and the bungled handling of the DNC’s 2024 election autopsy.  

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Now, with the midterms now only 100 days away, the RNC has banked a war chest of $128.5 million, and the DNC is reportedly $2 million in debt. According to NOTUS, in 2025 the DNC used its headquarters in Southeast Washington as collateral for a $15 million line of credit used to bolster its investments in off-year elections. As the Times story and a recent report in the Wall Street Journal make clear, Martin is also hemorrhaging the party’s confidence and loyalty.

The implications for Democrats in the midterms are potentially serious. But part of Martin’s remit is to pave the way for a Democratic win in the 2028 presidential election, when the DNC’s role becomes even more powerful and critical. So far, he has shown few signs of being able to do so, leaving the party at a disadvantage in a political environment that should favor them. When everything else is stripped away, that alone typifies Martin’s failure of leadership.

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