Voting against Ossoff's chances purely because he's Jewish and everyone hates Israel. A crazy sequence of events has to happen in the next 2 years for a Jewish nominee (never been one before).

@BIBO There was a Jewish nominee for VP (Gore-Liberman) in 2000 and they won the popular vote. To most Americans, political alignment is more meaningful than race (Ossoff in (D-GA), Donalds (R-FL)).

@BIBO Why does him being Jewish matter? If Bernie was younger he’d do great with anti Israel voters. It’s about the position on Israel, for example Fetterman would have no chance because he’s super pro Israel, even though he’s not Jewish.

@Jack1 it matters; his odds would probably be ~5% higher in my opinion if he wasn't. It affects how his views on Israel are perceived.

@bens where do you think that 5% has shifted to

@bens The polling doesn't agree - it suggests that Americans would prefer a Jewish candidate over a candidate of any other religion other than Catholicism.

https://sadat.umd.edu/sites/sadat.umd.edu/files/Critical%20Issues%20Poll%20December%2017%202025.pdf

@becauseyoudo

VP! = P: Presidential candidates are chosen by the people. 2000 was also a different time politically for Jews and Israel compared to 2026.

@Jack1 Sanders also did not win in the primaries--not in 2016 or 2020. Ossoff has labeled himself as pro-Israel (but not unequivocally), it will be difficult to maneuver this in the primaries.

In addition to humoring the DSA, Ossoff would have to persuade the many new voters who are coming-of age to back Jewish candidate. Despite whatever lines Ossoff draws, he will be tied to Israel as a Jew. Anti-Israel sentiment is extremely strong in the younger demographic. If they turn out in the primaries I'd wager it will not favor Jewish candidates.

@Gabrielle ehhhh, I think this poll has terrible wording. You can see that "Catholic" ranks higher than Jewish, and I think this heavily indicates that were "Christian" an option, it would rank higher than all of them by a decent margin.

Also this poll just does not capture the underlying reality which is that Israel will absolutely come up as a point of contention in the Dem primary in 2028, and Jewish candidates will be under different pressures to explain their views than non-Jewish candidates. Basically all American Jews have direct connections to Israel, Ossoff included.

For example, this from Josh Shapiro's wiki page is pretty typical of the intersection of "Jewish Americans" and "people involved in politics":

Most Jewish candidates will have had some relation or involvement with Israel that they must explain.

Jon Ossoff has Israeli family, like the vast majority of American Jews. Jon Ossoff understands Israeli politics deeply, so he will by necessity be forced to have a nuanced view if he wants to speak about it authentically. Whereas someone who is equivalently "pro-Israel" but not Jewish won't have these same difficulties.

Organizations like "Track AIPAC" or whatever that are just blatantly anti-Semitic will also continue to lie about Jewish candidates that aren't explicitly pro-Israel. Taking money from Jewish organizations that also give money in relation to Israeli politics will pose issues for Ossoff and others. Etc etc etc

@Gabrielle as an aside, my mom, like Josh Shapiro, also was involved in letter-writing campaigns to get the US to pressure the USSR to allow refuseniks to leave (and my father was one of those refuseniks that benefited)

@bens Great breakdown. I could see "A vote for Ossoff is a vote for another $1.5B to Israel" as an attack line at the debate.

@bens when you say Jewish organisations, what organisations are you talking about?

@BIBO Bernie lost because the establishment moved to stop him

Pro Israel groups don’t like Jon Ossoff, they’ll try stop him too. They acted like it was a very hard choice this year when he ran against a far right politician (Mike Collins) who hired nazis. When it was the most obvious choice ever

@BIBO that same line could be used against beshear or Pete Buttigieg? From an Anti Israel voter perspective, and what I’ve seen of those 2+ Ossoff, Ossoff is probably the most favourable to them

@Jack1 I agree it could be. But it won’t be. This kind of rhetoric is deployed disproportionately towards Jewish politicians. You can see Track AIPAC’s rhetoric during primaries where Jewish politicians who accepted money from ppl who also donated to AIPAC (lol) were labeled as pro-Israel but this was not extended to their gentile colleagues.

When I say “Jewish organizations,” I mean the large amounts of Jewish philanthropic money, Jewish Federations, and Jewish political organizations that are unaffiliated with pro-Israel advocacy.

rahm emanuel should be added as an option

@BabaGhanoush I’ll add them and James Talarico when I can. I got an error and submitted a bug request on the discord so hopefully this can be resolved

@BabaGhanoush How about a Baba Ga-no smh.

Massive limit orders up on aoc for one day!

@MIMIRMAGNVS @SemioticRivalry @brod any takers?

Hey @DylanSlagh can we get James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett added?

@bens I've been holding off adding more people for now. If there is someone who gets to like 2% on the election betting odds (dot) com aggregator, I'll definitely add them. Or polymarket for that matter

@robm would be interesting

2K limit at 32% Newsom yes

@FoxKHTML thanks for the free mana