When Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) insisted in October that he had “zero interest in running for president,” nobody took him all that seriously — after all, that’s the standard line for any incumbent up for re-election in a must-win state. But even before the Senator had successfully defended his seat on election night, the news media were already so enamored with his campaign that they were already comparing him to Barack Obama.
After his performance tonight, the media are all in on Jon Ossoff for 2028.
— Bill D'Agostino (@Banned_Bill) November 4, 2026
In just the last few hours they've compared him to Barack Obama, practically declared on his behalf, and placed bets about how soon he'll go back on his claim that he's not interested. pic.twitter.com/G6VI4lrzGt
CNN’s live election coverage was abuzz with Osoff 2028 talk within minutes of the polls in Georgia closing. At 7:05 p.m. ET, CNN chief political analyst David Axelrod predicted:
“There’s going to be a parade down to Atlanta after this to talk to Jon Ossoff, who said … during the campaign [that] he wasn’t going to run for president. There’s going to be a lot of interest in him because of the numbers that he’s putting up here in a state that wasn’t easy. He was considered vulnerable at the beginning of this cycle.”
Political correspondent Kasie Hunt chimed in: “You know who else said they weren’t going to run for president when they were running for Senate, was Barack Obama.”
She added: “The Ossoff for President campaign starts tonight, basically.”
On ABC, anchor David Muir excitedly (and repeatedly) brought up the prospect of an Ossoff presidential run. Within ten minutes of the polls closing, and before even seeing any of the results coming out of Georgia, Muir was already asking ABC News Washington bureau chief Rick Klein for his thoughts on a 2028 run:
“If you can, show us what you’ve got so far on the Jon Ossoff race. And I know he says he is not going to run for president… we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, but we have heard that before.”
The live election analysis on the other two major broadcast networks, CBS and NBC, also featured a healthy dose of Ossoff 2028 wishcasting. During the 9:00 p.m. ET hour, NBC News senior Washington correspondent remarked of Ossoff’s victory: “We’re keeping the focus on 2026, but there are real — and I’ve heard this from credible sources — 2028 implications here.”
Both Jackson and the CNN panel were particularly excited that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms had won her seat as well, because, as Jackson explained: “If Senator Jon Ossoff decided to run for president in 2028, it would be a Democratic governor who’d pick his replacement.”
Ossoff has been something of a media darling for months now, especially when it became clear he essentially had turned his Senate campaign into a referendum on President Trump. The freshman Senator won quite a few hearts in both New York and D.C. newsrooms by repeatedly referring to Trump as a “draft-dodging crook president.”
But what the corporate media love even more than anti-Trump rhetoric is seeing Democrats win, and Ossoff is indisputably an effective campaigner. Whether that’s enough to secure him the 2028 nomination is anyone’s guess, but it certainly has been enough to win him the adoration of TV journalists.
