Watch Georgia
If Ossoff wins by 7 to 10 points, the 2028 conversation is over before it starts. Here’s my case–and here’s where I could be wrong.
The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #1,004: Wednesday, August 19th, 2026
I’m going to make a prediction…and then I’m going to spend the rest of this letter trying to talk you out of it…because that’s the only honest way to sell a forecast.
If Jon Ossoff wins Georgia this November by 7 to 10 points, he becomes the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in 2028.
Not a contender. Not “in the mix.” The guy everybody else has to run against.
Now…let me show you my work.
First, Understand What That Number Would Mean
In 2021 Ossoff won by about a point and a quarter.
In a runoff. With the sitting president of the United States…screaming that Georgia’s election machinery…was rigged…and telling his own voters the whole thing was fake; which…and I want to be delicate here…is not what you’d call a turnout strategy.
So…that win came with an asterisk. Fair enough. His opponents have been waving it around for five years.
A 7-to-10 point win is a different animal entirely.
No runoff. No Trump sabotaging his own side’s turnout. A midterm…which historically…favors the party out of the White House…but has never once favored a Democrat in Georgia by double digits.
That’s not a win. That’s a demonstration.
And…party donors…who are, let us be honest…a herd of extremely wealthy people looking for permission to feel confident…don’t measure victories. They measure margins. A margin like that…is a permission slip with a bow on it.
Nobody Else Can Show You That Number
Here’s the part that should be obvious and somehow isn’t.
A Democrat can win California by twenty-two points…and it means precisely nothing about a general election. Same with New York…Illinois…Massachusetts. Running up the score in a stronghold…proves you can do arithmetic…not politics.
Georgia is the actual battleground. Sixteen electoral votes…a genuinely divided electorate…and…the exact demographic mix that decides presidential elections in this country.
So…look at the 2028 bench. Newsom carries California around his neck like a boat anchor. Whitmer and Shapiro are formidable…but…Michigan and Pennsylvania are states Democrats are supposed to compete in…and neither one requires you to persuade a single Southern voter of anything.
Ossoff would be the only Democrat in America who could walk into a donor room and say: I won the South. By double digits. Ask me how.
That’s not a talking point. That’s a monopoly.
And Then There’s What He Does To Them In Public
Now the fun part.
I want you to go watch Ossoff work a hearing room…because it’s the most consistently underrated thing in American politics.
He doesn’t yell. He doesn’t do the finger-jabbing thing. He doesn’t deliver the four-minute speech…disguised as a question…that every senator in both parties apparently learns on day one.
He asks a short question. He gets an answer. Then…he asks the next short question…the one the witness was praying he wouldn’t think of.
It’s prosecutorial. It’s patient. And…it works…because of a fact that Republicans across the aisle keep rediscovering…always at the worst possible moment:
You cannot filibuster a simple question.
There’s no talking point for “is that a yes or a no.” There’s no dodge for “you said the opposite in March…which one was true?”
The entire apparatus of modern GOP messaging…is built to survive shouting matches. It is helpless…against a polite man…with a timeline and eight minutes.
The result is that a certain kind of witness sits down expecting a brawl…and gets a deposition instead. You can watch it dawn on them…somewhere around minute three. It’s like watching a guy who trained his ass off for a bar fight…get served with papers.
And…on the floor, he’s got the one gear…almost nobody in that chamber has anymore: he can be plain. Short sentences. Real words. No poll-tested mush.
In a party that has spent a decade…communicating like a corporate compliance department…that alone would make him interesting. Paired with a double-digit Georgia win…it makes him the story.
Two More Things
He’s in his thirties.
After two cycles…in which the age question absolutely gutted Democrats…and I mean gutted…and I’m not going to pretend otherwise to spare anybody’s feelings…a candidate who answers that critique…by simply existing…is worth more than any policy platform.
And…the money’s already built.
The 2021 runoff constructed one of the largest small-dollar donor lists in Democratic politics. That list doesn’t expire. It’s the single hardest asset to build in a presidential campaign…and he’s had it sitting in a drawer for five years.
Now Let Me Argue Against Myself
Here’s where I earn your subscription.
Senators don’t win the presidency.
Since 1960…exactly one sitting senator has pulled it off.
Governors dominate for a reason; they have executive records…they’ve made hard calls…and…they haven’t got twenty years of roll-call votes for an opponent to strip-mine. Ossoff would be running straight uphill against history.
A wave can flatter anybody.
Gas at four dollars. An unpopular war in month seven. A White House…caught running a protection racket against Colorado.
If November is a wave…everybody on that side overperforms…and a chunk of them will mistake the tide for their own swimming.
The real test isn’t the raw margin; it’s whether he runs ahead of every other Democrat on the Georgia ballot. That’s the number I’ll be looking at…and you should too.
Frontrunner status two years out is nearly worthless.
In August 2018…nobody had Biden. In 2006…nobody had Obama. In 2014…nobody outside Manhattan had Trump.
And he has to want it.
He’s got a six-year term…and a state that likes him. Presidential campaigns…are two years of hell for people who mostly lose.
So…Here’s My Actual Prediction
Not that he wins in 2028. I have no idea.
My claim is that a 7-to-10 point Georgia win makes him the most-discussed name in Democratic politics by January of 2027. The polls…the profiles…the “is he running” stories…the donors quietly taking meetings in Atlanta.
That’s a prediction you can actually hold me to…and…I’ll take the loss in public if I’m wrong.
Watch the margin. Watch whether he outruns the rest of the Georgia ticket.
Everything after that…writes itself.
#HoldFast
Back soon.
-Jack
Jack Hopkins
P.S. There’s a reason Republicans have spent five years insisting the 2021 result was an asterisk.
It’s the same reason a man keeps mentioning he wasn’t really trying.
He’s worried about the rematch.
They’re about to get one…in a midterm…with no runoff…and nobody left to blame.
Should be an interesting evening.
P.P.S. One more thing…and it’s the detail that convinced me.
CNN reported in June that Ossoff’s rallies are being staged by a presidential-level events firm.
Sit with that.
Nobody hires a presidential events shop to win a Senate race in Georgia. It’s expensive…it’s unnecessary…and…it doesn’t move a single vote in Macon. A Senate campaign hires a Senate events shop…because a Senate campaign is what it is.
You hire the presidential firm…when you’re building the muscle memory for something else. When you want your people to already know how the advance works… how the room gets built…how the shot looks on television…before the stakes arrive.
Here’s why that matters more than any speech he’s given.
Talk is free. Line items aren’t.
Anybody can float a 2028 trial balloon to a reporter…and deny it later. Nobody accidentally overpays for staging across an entire cycle.
So…when people ask me whether he’s thinking about it…I don’t point at his rhetoric.
I point at his invoices.
Sources
The 2028 talk is already happening
Sen. Jon Ossoff almost didn’t run for reelection. Now some Democrats want to draft him for 2028 — CNN, June 29, 2026
The race as it stands
Georgia Senate: The Peach State Ripens for Democrats — Sabato’s Crystal Ball, UVA Center for Politics (upgraded to Likely Democratic)
Crystal Ball upgrades Jon Ossoff to likely victory in Georgia Senate race — The Hill
GA Senate 2026 race summary — Cook Political Report (Collins wins GOP runoff by 10+)
Georgia Senate 2026 forecast and polling tracker — Race to the WH
The money
Jon Ossoff builds $80M-plus war chest in Georgia Senate race — Newsweek (July FEC filing)
Small donors vs. big checks: Fundraising divide shapes Georgia Senate race — OpenSecrets
Ossoff rakes in another $20M, building on fundraising advantage — Georgia Recorder
The Republican problem
Republicans Saw Georgia as a Top Pickup. Now It’s a Mess — TIME (the 15-point early-voting enthusiasm gap)
Georgia’s U.S. Senate race heats up as Ossoff, GOP rivals make candidacy official — Georgia Recorder
This is going to be fun to watch.
Fingers crossed! I love listening to him with his assured, quiet, confidence. He speaks the truth from a place of strength. I hope everyone in Georgia is listening. Also, the rest of us. #HoldFast