Transcript: This State’s Senators Are Changing the Democratic Party
Bacon: So I’ll close with this, which is probably what brought me to interview you in the first place. I’ve known Tia a long time, but we were talking internally about who might run in 2028, and then I brought up Ossoff, because I think he is charismatic and he’s youngish, and he had done something where I was like, oh, he had went on Crooked Media and he had done something, maybe Colbert or somebody like that. He had done a couple of national things. So I was like, oh. And then my colleague was like, “I think you’re talking about the wrong senator.” And they were like, “Warnock, actually, you want to build a Democratic coalition, start with Black voters, move to progressives. He’s a great speaker.” So I don’t know if either one of them are thinking about it, but what’s your assessment? Do you think either one of them or both could go national, and two, do you think they want to go national? I’ve heard Warnock is maybe a little shyer than I think… but anyway, go ahead. With both of them. Yeah.
Mitchell: So here, of course, both of them, when you ask, say, I’m serving the people of Georgia. Ossoff is saying, “I’m here to defeat the Republicans and get elected to another term.” That was the same thing Warnock said two years ago, but both of them have a national profile and I think both of them are in the conversation, the speculation about 2028. And quite frankly, I think both of them are open to hearing people out, and I think if either one of them believes he has a pathway, then I think they would test it out privately and possibly publicly. Again, this is just my speculation.
Here’s the difference between the two. Warnock to me is someone who, again, his chosen career path was preacher, and politics is something he found himself falling into or being led into because of his activism as a Black pastor in the liberation theology vein of Martin Luther King and John Lewis and other Black males who… politics and the church have always been very closely aligned in the Black community. And so that led him to be an activist and eventually led him to joining the Senate. Will that lead him to running for president? I think he’s open to whether that’s a pathway, but I don’t necessarily think it’s on his long-term, written-out goals that “I’m going to run for president.” I think he has to see it. I think he’s going to have to be convinced. I think he wants to hear from people, and if he feels that the people need him and want him, I think he might be open to testing it out. That’s Warnock.