Michael Barbaro

No one's running against him in the primary right now.

And what the no vote here says is that he doesn't want to risk backlash from inside his own party in this campaign, whether that's from a potential primary challenger who could get recruited from one of these angry groups, or whether it's the small donors who are fueling his campaign, deciding, you know what, maybe we're not so into John Ossoff.

He doesn't want to risk backlash.

That's fascinating because as you're suggesting, John Ossoff,

could reasonably be most focused on a Republican opponent in a general election saying, you should have voted to reopen the government.

That's what matters in this race.

And instead, what you're saying is he's more worried about upsetting Democrats in a potential primary, and that's what animated his vote on the shutdown.

And in the end, he votes to keep the government shut down.

because he wants to look like he's on the side of the Democratic base.

That's what we think happened here.

Yeah, I have not talked to Senator Ossoff here, but what you can see is that there are two choices.

Choice one is vote to reopen the government and say, I'm going to buck my party and I'm going to reopen the government, even if people on my left attack me for it, right?

That's a selling point in a lot of places, right?

And so here's a Democrat saying, you know, that's not the right calculus here.

To the extent he's making a politically motivated choice, the right calculus is to make sure that your own party likes you and supports you and sees you as a fighter because you want that energy behind you in a coming midterm election.

I noticed as well that several of the Democrats hoping to be the next presidential nominee said,

woke up this morning on Monday and decided that this was a terrible decision.

I think a lot of them decided last night.

They didn't even wait.

You know, like they started issuing these statements on Sunday.