This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Everyone should be as lucky in their adversaries as Jon Ossoff. On Wednesday, President Trump held a rally in Marietta, Georgia, where he attacked the Democratic senator—or rather, he tried.“Jon Ossoff, he’s terrible,” Trump said. “He reminds me of Pinky Herman. Do you ever see Pinky Herman?” The line might have landed better if he had gotten Pee-wee Herman’s name right. You’d expect Trump of all people to remember weird ’80s kitsch.Ossoff has benefited before from the president’s approach. In a runoff on January 5, 2021, he unseated GOP Senator David Perdue—a defeat that many Republicans blamed in part on Trump’s meltdown after he lost the 2020 presidential election; he was focused more on false claims of fraud in Georgia than on campaigning for Perdue or Senator Kelly Loeffler, who also lost. Ossoff’s narrow win made him look like a bit of an accidental senator, but his 2026 reelection bid is shaping up differently. Republicans have struggled to mount a strong campaign against him, and even in a red-leaning state, most forecasters expect Ossoff to beat Republican Mike Collins, who limped to the nomination out of a messy primary.Now buzz has begun over whether Ossoff might be a strong Democratic candidate for president in two years. The hype has grown stronger in recent weeks, even though Ossoff is less well-known and has a less defined image than some of the other possible candidates. Ossoff may not end up running for president—and, indeed, may not win his reelection race—but here are a few theories on why he’s capturing 2028 attention right now.1. Roll the TapeIn the age of clippers, a politician who can deliver a strong message or moment in one to two minutes will inevitably draw lots of attention. Like his fellow Millennial Zohran Mamdani, Ossoff seems to have a knack for it. Ossoff appears to have coined (or at least popularized) the Epstein class as a way of tying the Jeffrey Epstein story to broader questions of corruption and inequality in the Trump GOP. When rumors circulated that Trump might declare Ossoff and his fellow Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock “illegitimate,” Ossoff had a crisp response. He’s also had politically effective exchanges with Jay Clayton, Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence (about who won the 2020 presidential election), and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (about past claims of victory in the still-raging Iran war) during recent committee hearings.2. Finding His VoiceIt’s not just what Ossoff says—it’s how he says it. For almost two decades, the Democratic Party has been plagued by guys (almost always guys) who sound like they’re doing their best Barack Obama imitation. Ossoff has been guilty of this in the past, but lately, he seems to have developed his own cadence. In the exchanges with Clayton and Hegseth, he adopted a forensic, almost monotone voice to interrogate them. (He’s not a former prosecutor or even a lawyer, and he doesn’t have the flair for courtroom drama that many of his colleagues do.) Witnesses’ fumbling looks bad by comparison, and Ossoff sounds righteously angry without being rageful. It’s a kind of grandstanding-by-not-grandstanding, and it stands in sharp contrast with Trump’s over-the-top infotainment style or J. D. Vance’s awkward pandering.3. Earnest, Not AnxiousPolitics has become fixated recently on the idea of “authenticity,” another way of saying whether a politician seems comfortable in his or her own skin. Ossoff comes off as earnest and a little nerdy: His stump speeches and questioning in hearings suggest a guy who has done a lot of preparation and doesn’t feel a need to hide that. But unlike some other Democrats in the 2028 hunt (Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and, most glaringly, Gavin Newsom), he also doesn’t look like he’s trying too hard. He doesn’t frantically jump into every ephemeral news moment, and he hasn’t taken up swearing to try to show that he’s not a regular senator; he’s a cool senator.4. Not That Kind of ManBoth parties are focused on machismo at the moment. The secretary of Health and Human Services can’t stop working out on video (in jeans), and Hegseth is obsessed with testosterone, when he isn’t doing calisthenics (poorly). Many Democrats were so eager for an answer that they rushed to nominate an oysterman to the U.S. Senate despite, as my colleague Elaine Godfrey put it, “a bouquet of red flags.” Ossoff represents a different kind of masculinity, one that owes less to Sly Stallone and more to Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: square-jawed, but bound more by principle than muscle.5. A Blank SlateTrump has been talking a lot about Democrats as “Communists,” and at Wednesday’s rally, he tried to lump Ossoff in. That’s a tough order: Ossoff isn’t a DSA-aligned candidate and doesn’t have Mamdani’s or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s left-wing credentials. In fact, he’s a bit of a blank slate on the national stage, without a clear ideological profile or strong ties to any party faction. That makes him alluring to Democrats of all varieties, who can project onto him whatever they wish—at least for now.Eventually, a national figure has to start staking positions and disappointing some people, and buzzy moments in Senate hearings don’t necessarily mint presidents, or else we might be in Booker’s or Harris’s second term. Then again, Ossoff may not want to be a national figure. He has repeatedly said that he is not running for president in 2028, and although that’s an obligatory statement for any senator running for reelection, it might also happen to be true. At the moment, Democrats seem to be thirsting for an alternative to the familiar likely names, and few things excite the heart like someone who insists that he’s not interested.Related:The return of the Democratic manly manThe 2028 presidential race has begun.Here are four new stories from The Atlantic:The Social Security reckoning is finally coming.Why would Meta download so much porn?Does Iran have a plan?Inside the feud over Ukraine’s drone successToday’s NewsThe United States has recorded its highest annual total of measles cases since the disease was declared eliminated in the country in 2000. The resurgence, driven by declining vaccination rates and dozens of outbreaks, has raised concerns that the U.S. could lose its measles-elimination status later this year.The United States launched another round of strikes on Iran overnight after President Trump told Axios that he is “considering a massive attack” that would be “bigger than ever before.”The Trump administration imposed new tariffs of 10 to 12.5 percent on imports from more than 80 countries after an earlier global tariff expired.DispatchesThe Books Briefing: Emma Sarappo explores what climate fiction should accomplish.Explore all of our newsletters here.Evening ReadIllustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Carl de Souza / AFP / Getty; Carlos Moreno / NurPhoto / Getty; Yuri Cortez / AFP / Getty.A Planeload of InformantsBy Kevin SieffThe governor of Baja California is a 40-year-old attorney and former big-city mayor named Marina del Pilar. Her state, which includes the megacity of Tijuana, is a magnet for American tourists, and also for narcotics cartels. As a politician of some experience, she is presumably unfazed by the sorts of challenges that come with governing a volatile section of her volatile country.And yet, in what has quickly become a very famous recording of a phone call that leaked last week, she has difficulty masking her shock about an unusual predicament. “Are they saying they want to extradite me?” she asks her interlocutor, who is apparently an intermediary for the FBI. The “they” in question is the United States government. Almost immediately, her tone becomes more businesslike, and she makes a not-so-cryptic offer: “Can’t they tell me what they want me to talk about? I might know or hear a lot of security-related things.”In other words, the governor of the strategically important border state of Baja California was just caught on tape offering to become an FBI informant. The remarkable thing here is that she would not be the first; the list of current and former Mexican officials and drug traffickers who have offered to cooperate with the U.S. government is now lengthy.Read the full article.More From The AtlanticSmoky skies are coming back.Homer was the Homer of the ZulusThe White House’s MAHA gatekeeperThe art of the giveawayRemember Tesla?America is about to go over a peptide cliff.Culture BreakPaolo Pellegrin / MagnumRead (or skip). What makes so much Millennial fiction boring? Hillary Kelly argues that the generation’s novels tend to focus on the flatness of modern life—but alienation doesn’t have to be dull.Explore. The sex recession, as the therapist Esther Perel sees it, is about more than the physical: It’s a sign of Americans’ fear of uncertainty, and a general shortage of eroticism, Faith Hill writes.Play our daily crossword.Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.