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You’d have to say that Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff is the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent this year. But you could better say that he’s the only vulnerable Democratic incumbent.
The three other races where Democrats are at least nominally playing defense all feature retiring incumbents — Michigan, New Hampshire and Minnesota — which is pretty much the only reason that they’re being contested in this so-far woebegone year for Republicans.
Just how vulnerable Ossoff is, though, depends in part on whether Republicans, as expected, nominate Rep. Mike Collins to run against him. Collins is a notorious online troll and a hard-line MAGA booster who will be hard for the more moderate Derek Dooley to best in either the May primary or a June runoff. Carter is a dream opponent for Ossoff in a midterm year when the Atlanta suburbs will be out in force and rural Georgia turnout is expected to dip.
But Ossoff’s vulnerability also depends on whether he has a compelling case to make to voters in a state that, though swingy, still has a pronounced Republican preference. Ossoff owes his 2021 runoff victory to then-and-future President Trump trying to overturn his loss in the Peach State. Being a little-known, moderate-seeming alternative when the GOP was actively eating its own face was good enough for Ossoff then, but now he has a record to defend — one with lots of votes for Biden-era initiatives unpopular in Georgia.
In a campaign kickoff event, Ossoff laid out his theme in broad strokes, and the message was pure populism. But while it was mostly of the economic kind not unfamiliar to Democrats, there was another, more memorable variety of pitchfork in there, too.
“This is the Epstein class, ruling our country,” he said, talking about Trump’s ultrarich Cabinet members and advisers. “They are the elites they pretend to hate.”
Economic populism has its limits for Ossoff in a race in which he will have to rely on the wealthiest Georgians to overwhelmingly support him. Mamdani-style democratic socialism would not sit well in Sandy Springs. But, as Republicans demonstrated in 2024, there’s no practical socioeconomic barrier to attacking people for being soft on pedophilia and child sex trafficking.
Democratic message makers have warmed up to the idea of making anti-Epsteinism a big part of the 2026 midterms. Obama message guru Dan Pfeiffer, for one, argues that “Democrats need to show voters that we will take on a corrupt political system to build an economy centered on working people. That’s easier said than done, but running against the ‘Epstein Class’ is a start.”
With the former Duke of York, now reduced to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, facing criminal charges for his involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes, Bill Gates made into an international pariah, and Wall Street cashiering Epstein associates, we understand why so many were so unwilling to release the files for so long. The spiderweb of destruction continues to spread in ways that can’t be controlled, even touching those who don’t seem to have committed any offenses themselves.
Democrats have learned to accept the collateral damage of some of their own as part of a scandal that is working so powerfully against Republicans. Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are set to testify at the end of next week behind closed doors before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The former president’s reputation for sexual misconduct is already so legendary, especially after #MeToo reframed his assignations with a 21-year-old White House intern, that there’s probably not much damage left to do there, but Republicans will certainly try.
The current president and his party, meanwhile, don’t seem to have a strategy for what to do about the problem. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Epstein testimony, with its meme-tastic rant about the Dow Jones Industrial Average, is pretty good evidence the GOP doesn’t have a good counterargument to make here. Going from “release the files” to “actually, we can’t” to “we will, but there are no third parties who merit prosecution” to “cheerio, Prince Andrew,” has been a comically bad way to respond to an issue that Republicans already knew was devastatingly powerful because they had used it themselves.
Republican leaders had a midterm briefing Tuesday from White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and the president’s pollsters, and they shared the gist with some preferred outlets. The message was that the GOP should unite around selling good economic news, particularly on prices, and then do their best to ignore the controversies from the president, i.e., the Greenlands of the day. Not mentioned in the coverage was what to do about the “Epstein class” line, except to say that it wasn’t that important because the economy will be “THE issue” in November.
On Thursday, the Justice Department unfurled a giant banner with the president’s face 20 feet tall over the front door of the building on Independence Avenue. There’s been a lot of discussion about how trashing entirely what was previously the sometimes-fictive independence of the Justice Department bodes ill for the rule of law. Maybe so. But it certainly bodes ill for Trump and his party’s ability to insulate themselves from charges of corruption and abuse of power from Democrats this year.
And while Republicans will be permitted to ignore Trump’s controversies, they will not be forgiven for actually giving themselves meaningful distance from the administration when necessary. And that will be particularly on the Epstein matter, where the White House has taken the hardest line possible.
Elections may be predominately about one issue or another, but barring world-historical events, they are always about many issues. Democrats have found one here that they believe can be woven into multiple topics in multiple races. Unlike the lame effort to use Project 2025 in the last presidential election, this time the Democrats aren’t trying to get people to talk about something, they’re just trying to be part of the conversation that’s already taking place.
[Programming alert: Watch "The Hill Sunday" with Chris Stirewalt — All politics is local ... or is it? We’ll hear from Gov. Kevin Stitt, Oklahoma Republican and chair of the bipartisan National Governors Association, on the growing tension between state leaders and the federal government. Plus, we head down to Mount Vernon to mark our latest stop on the Road to 250 and celebrate George Washington’s *real* birthday with Lindsay Chervinsky, executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library. And, as always, we’ll be sure to cover all the latest political news with expert analysis from our best-in-the-business panel of journalists. Be sure to catch us on NewsNation at 10 a.m. ET / 9 a.m. CT or on your local CW station.]
