Once upon a time, the export crop of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket was whale oil. Nowadays it is money, harpooned by visiting campaigns from deep-pocketed donors at anchor in their summer seaside retreats. In the peak season of July and August, the islands’ social rhythms are dictated by money-harvesting events, wrangled by local hosts jostling for the social éclat that comes from securing a high-profile honoree.

By late August this year, the territory had already been worked over by a series of hopeful visitors with hands outstretched, such as the rising Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico, Hakeem Jeffries in eager pursuit of the House Speakership that is almost in his grasp, Maryland Governor Wes Moore and others questing the donor dollar. Finally, at the end of August, there appeared Jon Ossoff, the boy Senator from Georgia and the latest great white hope of the Democratic party. With tickets at a minimum $1,000 a head, he was a huge hit.

“I hope he runs in ’28,” a politically savvy dowager commented to me enthusiastically the next day. “I’ll definitely vote for him!” She had been particularly struck by an “equivocal” answer he had given to a question on Israel and Gaza. “It was deft,” she said admiringly, “and that’s why I think he’d be a great candidate in 2028.”

Like Obama, Ossoff is young, relatively unknown, good-looking and eloquent as a public speaker

Like Obama, Ossoff is young, relatively unknown, good-looking and eloquent as a public speaker

“He’s definitely being propped up right now by the Democrats as their ideal candidate,” a Republican political operative told me after a gloomy rumination on his party’s dimming midterm prospects. “This happens once a cycle. There’s always one candidate that the Democrats try to put a really big shiny polish on and who doesn’t usually live up to expectations.”

This called to mind other political meteors who have flared across the media skyscape and then faded, such as Beto O’Rourke, once the great white hope for a blue Texas, subject of a famously fawning Vanity Fair profile, exponent of liberal values – gun control, climate change, single-payer healthcare; or Pete Buttigieg, articulate and ambitious, proudly gay, studiously centrist and prized for his presumed ability to mobilize young voters. “Mayor Petebot,” as many call him, still ranks second in polls of potential 2028 Democratic nominees that accord the lead to Kamala Harris and should therefore be deemed worthless.

Today, we have fresher faces, such as the indecisive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro. Even Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger has been putting out the word to local politicos that she is going to run once her undistinguished term in Richmond ends. Of course, the greatest example of a Democratic “ideal candidate” was Barack Obama – and, like Obama, 39-year-old Ossoff is young, relatively unknown, good-looking and eloquent as a........

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