Sen. Ossoff fuels reelection campaign with attacks on Trump

Funny how memory works in politics. Ossoff built his entire 2017 special election run on sounding like a Republican who'd wandered into the wrong primary. Cut wasteful spending. Hold both parties accountable. Talk tough, sound centrist, don't scare the suburbs. It worked well enough to make him a national story even in a losing race. Now he's the sitting senator from Georgia running for reelection, and the strategy has flipped entirely. The accountability talk is gone. What's left is Trump, Trump, and more Trump.

That's not an accident, it's a read on where his coalition actually is. Ossoff knows the voters who elected him weren't won over by fiscal-restraint talking points forever, they were won over because he seemed reasonable and Trump made everyone anxious. Eight years later the anxiety is still the product he's selling, just without the "I'm basically one of you" packaging that got him in the door. That's a tell. When a Democrat needs to run purely on opposition rather than on a record or an agenda, it usually means the record isn't the thing he wants Georgia voters looking at.

Georgia isn't a state where you win by nationalizing everything into Trump-versus-the-world. It's a state where Ossoff barely squeaked by twice, both times in unusual circumstances that won't repeat themselves. Suburban voters who liked "accountable to you" rhetoric might notice they're getting a very different senator than the candidate they were sold. If Ossoff wants a third term, running against a man who isn't even on the ballot is a strange way to ask for it.