In response to a poll finding that swing voters by a two-to-one margin have an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party, last week Thomas B. Edsall, the New York Times columnist, counseled the party “to perform a kind of brutal surgery on itself” amounting to an “ideological exorcism.”
For example, he proposed deportation for all unauthorized immigrants who have been in America for less than five years (while offering green cards for those here longer and without criminal records), “lifetime sentences for offenders convicted of multiple violent crimes,” “the death penalty if supported by the voters in a state,” declaring that “there are two sexes: men and women,” and banning gender-affirming medical treatments for minors.
Edsall is hardly alone in urging Democrats to punch left to win the center. Ruy Teixeira, in his now-defunct newsletter The Liberal Patriot, regularly made pleas similar to Edsall’s and layered on top a rejection of “a rapid clean energy transition” and accepting that “fossil fuels, especially natural gas and oil, will be a big part of the energy mix for many, many years to come.”
Another prominent Substacker, Matthew Yglesias, last fall made the “uncomfortable” argument that “a political coalition large enough to wield power and accomplish useful things absolutely needs to include bigots” (emphasis original) and the reason why “Republicans are winning more elections” is because the “range of views that one is allowed to hold or express while remaining a member in good standing of America’s center-left has gotten smaller.” Last Friday, during an exchange on X about “wokeness” in the Democratic “establishment,” Yglesias pledged to “endorse” the anti-establishment Senate candidate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, if he would “come out against affirmative action and for assigning kids to sports teams based on biological sex.”
Are these uncomfortable truths? Or misguided overcorrections?
I’ve been arguing the latter, as Democratic Party unfavorability in polls is not as good a metric as Democratic performance at the ballot box. Without throwing transgender people or other vulnerable constituencies under the proverbial bus, Democrats have won a critical Wisconsin Supreme Court seat and flipped a state Senate seat in a Fort Worth, Texas district that Donald Trump won by 17 points. In fact, since Trump’s inauguration, Democrats have flipped 30 state legislative seats and coughed up zero; such an election-cycle shutout hasn’t happened in at least 15 years.
The November midterms will be a more significant acid test, with coast-to-middle-America-to-coast House races and several Senate and gubernatorial races in battleground states. But Senator Jon Ossoff, the Georgia Democrat, is already disproving the hysterical advice from the vociferously anti-woke, having built a healthy lead without any scars from political surgery.
At the start of 2026, Ossoff was the only incumbent Democratic Senator in a race deemed a “tossup” by the handicappers at The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter.
The presumption of a tight race was sound, even though Ossoff led most general election trial heats sampled in 2025. After all, Ossoff represents a state where Trump won in 2024, and Republicans have total control of the state government. In January 2021, he barely eked out a narrow runoff election victory to secure his first term, unwittingly abetted by Trump who was publicly and baselessly challenging the integrity of Georgia’s Republican-managed election administration.
But in April, before Georgia Republicans settled on a nominee, Cook shifted its rating of the race to “Lean Democratic,” based in part on intra-party GOP division and Ossoff’s “eye-popping” war chest. Representative Mike Collins won the GOP runoff one month ago, yet we haven’t seen fresh evidence of robust party unity, making the race more competitive. Ossoff continues to lead in polls, including a June survey from Fox News finding a stunning 13-point lead over Collins. (Another June poll from Wick, an online pollster that employs artificial intelligence technology, has Ossoff up by four.) And Ossoff is crushing the fundraising race, outraising Collins 10-to-1 in the second quarter and boasting a $42 million-to-$2 million cash-on-hand advantage. All this happened
without Ossoff making any jarring breaks with his party.
In 2025, he voted against Trump 91 percent of the time, more than any other Senate Democrat representing a state Trump won except for Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin.
Early in 2025, Ossoff joined a successful filibuster of Republican legislation that would have codified an executive order denying federal funds to schools that let transgender athletes play on girls’ teams. One Nation, a political action committee tied to the Senate Republican leadership, tried to exploit the vote in a TV ad. Over footage of a male basketball player wearing an “Ossoff” jersey and swatting the ball out of the hands of a female opponent, a narrator says, “Man-to-man defense isn’t woke enough for Ossoff. He’s playing for they/them. Call and tell Senator Ossoff: Stop dunking on defenseless girls.” A Republican primary candidate, Buddy Carter, aired an ad featuring an actor playing a transgender woman who says, “Buddy Carter even believes there’s only two genders. Now Buddy wants to help Trump in the Senate and beat Jon Ossoff. After all, Ossoff is done for us. It’s just not fair.” Neither ad slowed Ossoff’s roll, and Carter came in third.
One of the few times Ossoff voted with Trump was on the Laken Riley Act, which requires mandatory detention without bail of undocumented immigrants who were charged—but not necessarily convicted—of low-level crimes. The bill, brought to the Senate floor mere days after Trump’s inauguration, was named after a Georgia nursing student murdered by an undocumented immigrant. Ossoff crossed the aisle with 11 other Senate Democrats, including his fellow Georgian Raphael Warnock. In the wake of Trump’s out-of-control mass deportation operation, most Democrats who backed the bill probably now regret their vote. But as a Georgian, Ossoff (and Warnock) had little political choice.
Otherwise, Ossoff has not leaned right on immigration. In fact, he has taken the lead on investigating human rights abuses in immigration detention centers and has charged the Trump administration with blocking access to congressional investigators. He sponsored legislation requiring local approval before the federal government can open new immigration detention facilities, and successfully lobbied to prevent the opening of a 10,000-bed facility in Social Circle, Georgia—a stance for which Ossoff was aligned with the local political leadership in a Trump stronghold. After ICE agents shot and killed two protestors in Minnesota, Ossoff opposed further federal funding for ICE without the adoption of civil liberties protections.
Ossoff has not embraced the “Abolish ICE” slogan, which might disappoint some on the left. But he is firmly on the side of ICE reform and hasn’t paired it with any conservative rhetoric favorable to mass deportations as Edsall and Teixeira have urged. This hasn’t stopped Republicans from airing ads baselessly claiming Ossoff wants to give health care to illegal immigrants, but these spots have yet to draw any political blood.
Ossoff has become widely known for his withering speeches accusing Trump of corruption, linking Trump’s self-enrichment to the economic concerns Americans are feeling amid continuing high prices and war in the Mideast. Not only has he refused to distance himself from a supposedly toxic Democratic brand, but the 39-year-old who spent much of his pre-electoral career making documentaries about malfeasance abroad is also explicitly campaigning for a Democratic Senate majority as the best way to end Trump’s corruption. At a Friday rally, Ossoff declared, “We won’t just restore checks and balances for the next two years. We will rebuke him so decisively that no president will dare try this kind of brazen corruption and abuse again for centuries.”
How is Ossoff getting away with this in Georgia of all places?
First, unlike some Democratic incumbents in the House representing deep blue districts, Ossoff avoided a primary challenge. That has allowed him to tread lightly and walk a careful line on controversial subjects without being loudly accused of ideological impurity from his left flank. For example, regarding Israel—a subject that has opened up intra-party rifts in other Democratic primaries—Ossoff has carved a delicate path, voting for blocking the sale of rifles that could be used in Gaza but voting against blocking sales of “air-to-ground munitions” needed to defend against attacks “from Iran, Lebanon, and Yemen.” Freed from intra-party tangles, Ossoff has been able to train his political fire on Trump.
Second, Trump is not popular in Georgia. Yes, he won two years ago, but not by much. And his job approval is underwater there and in every other swing state. Ossoff has no reason to pull his punches.
Third, Georgia may be trending blue up and down the ballot. The Democratic nominee for governor, former Atlanta mayor and Joe Biden administration official Keisha Lance Bottoms, leads by 5 points in a recent Fox News poll, and by 7, according to a recent State Navigate poll. The latter further found that Democrats have a shocking 8-point lead in a generic ballot test for the Georgia state House.
Finally, and most importantly, we don’t have any evidence the Democratic Party needs “brutal surgery on itself,” performed by Ossoff or anyone else, to win elections when the public is livid at how Republicans have failed to better the lives of average Americans. If any brand is currently toxic, it’s the GOP brand.
Sure, Democrats may not be beloved by swing voters, and would have to prove themselves worthy stewards to the public should they reclaim power. But poll numbers showing unfavorability need not be sloppily interpreted to mean picking an ostentatious fight with the party’s left wing is necessary.
Such data does not demand making crude political calculations to appeal to one voter faction over another. The name of the game when winning elections is addition, not subtraction, and that requires finding and elevating areas of common ground. While antsy pundits tend to glorify jumping on political land mines as acts of bravery, Ossoff is providing a master class in how to navigate around them and stay alive.
