Jon Ossoff And The Tale Of Two Campaigns
The Best, And Worst, Of Times
Last night I tweeted that Jon Ossoff's 2017 campaign for Congress was the worst run campaign of the Trump era, a claim that was potentially overegging things (like, I can't really defend the notion that Ossoff's campaign was worse than Sara Gideon's, as bad as his was), but some people have asked me to expand the idea, so let's have some fun.
In 2017, Ossoff ran a campaign that is best described as the human equivalent of three day old pizza. It seems appealing, nominally, but once you actually dig in it's much worse than you realized. Ossoff was a media darling and a Resistance hero, but he wasn't actually himself. Unless, of course, he turned himself into the borderline profane, tell it like it is, speaker of fire and ice in between these two races, which we know he didn't.
The 2017 campaign was a campaign from people who fundamentally believed that the way to win suburbanites and white people was to be polite, deferential, and fundamentally Republicans without the edge. Ossoff ran a campaign light on substance, thinking that not being Trump would be enough to win him a Congressional seat. He didn't try to do anything, he didn't try to boost Democratic turnout with appeals based on his agenda, he just touted the fact that John Lewis endorsed him and said that Trump was bad and assumed it was taken for granted he should win. And then he lost, failing to get 50% in the jungle primary and then failing to beat Karen Handel in the head to head.
What changed in three years? Why was Ossoff able to do so much better with white suburbanites than he had been able to in 2017? Why was he able to outrun Stacey Abrams by nearly 7% in blood red Forsyth, after failing to convince GOP-minded social liberals to vote for him in 2017? The answer is actually pretty simple - he wasn't a useless automaton for the second run. In 2017, he looked like he was cosplaying a serious person, speaking in nonsense platitudes and constantly showing up in a suit and tie, which, far from making him seem up for the moment, just reinforced how fake everything about that campaign felt. In 2020, he was almost never in a suit and tie, showing up in a button down shirt, sleeves rolled up, and looking much more natural. His language - both in his debate takedown of David Perdue, but just generally - was also clearly more authentic to who he is, and it was clear.
Seriously, watch this video and tell me that you could see 2017 Ossoff saying this. Tell me with a straight face that you see that conservative, timid, personification of the prevent defence ever letting that be said. You can't, because there is no way in hell anyone back then ever would have let him say that. He ran a timid campaign designed to not say or do anything that could end up costing him, and in the process, lost. He played not to lose, and in the process he lost. In 2020, he came to win, and did.
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So, then, what is the lesson of the Georgia runoffs? If the old school consensus is wrong, what is the right path?
It's not, as many will say, about ideology. Ossoff didn't win because he supported checks, and he didn't win because he wasn't as left wing as his opponents claimed he was. He won because of a personal authenticity and humanity to him that made wealthy, white, social liberals okay voting for him. He won because people liked him, and this time, they felt like they knew him.
Up in Pennsylvania, many people love telling me that John Fetterman is too left wing to win, either because he is too left wing to win over Western Pennsylvanians who voted for Wolff in 2018 and then Trump in 2020, or because he's too left wing to win over voters who went Biden/Brian Fitzpatrick in 2020. Both arguments are, with respect, bullshit. Voters aren't opposed to left wing policies, they're opposed to the kinds of people who are left wing. Fetterman will do better than Biden in Western PA because Trump voters won't show up, he'll do better with rural whites because he's a cultural fit with them, and he'll continue to do well with suburban whites because they agree on the social liberalism and suburbanites respect decent people, which by all accounts Fetterman is.
The path to doing better with well off, white social liberals doesn't run through policy triangulation and uselessness, but through running real candidates with ideas and beliefs, and yes, humanity. Ossoff ran a polished, consultant-led campaign that many thought was brilliant, and lost, and then came back and ran a campaign that was true to himself and won. The lesson for 2022 Democrats? Run a campaign true to yourselves, and you'll increase your chances of victory at the same time. Run to the polished, consultant centre? You're dead on arrival.