I spoke to CNN for a piece on the impact of former President Trump and his endorsement on the 2022 campaign.

“Trump’s presence looms over every race in ways that have a profound effect on the field, eliciting allies and rooting out foes, but the nod is diminished when every Republican is effectively running as a Trump-aligned candidate,” GOP strategist Liam Donovan said.

Read the full piece here.

I spoke with McClatchy‘s Alex Roarty about Democrats’ Manchin problem as they struggle to sort out a strategy to pass major infrastructure legislation.

In coming months, the leader of the Democratic Party must decide whether he can cajole Manchin with a mixture of schmoozing and arm-twisting that eventually convinces the lawmaker to relent — a process that threatens to further delay Biden’s agenda if it fails — or instead capitulate and move on to other issues, a decision that would anger the president’s liberal base and reduce the size and scope of his potential accomplishments. 

Either approach carries risk, political veterans say, in dealing with a lawmaker whose opposition to any legislation can single-handedly stop it from becoming law in an evenly divided Senate.

“We’re all trapped in this choose-your-own-adventure book where Joe Manchin is the narrator, and he’s the only one who knows how this ends,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican lobbyist. “In the meantime, you either roll Manchin or you co-opt him by doing what he wants.”

Read the full piece here.

Amy Wang of the Washington Post quoted a tweet of mine in her piece on the fallout from Joe Manchin’s Sunday op-ed declaring his opposition to S. 1 and affirming his support for the filibuster as currently constituted.

Manchin’s op-ed would allow Republicans to argue that, regardless of a filibuster, the legislation doesn’t have enough Democratic votes to pass the Senate, highlighting a point of intense tension within the Democratic Party.

“Can’t very well blame GOP intransigence/outmoded process if you can’t produce a majority,” former GOP operative Liam Donovan tweeted.

Read the full piece here.

The tweet was also picked up in the Post‘s Daily 202 tipsheet, citing the Wang piece:

As our colleague Amy B Wang reports, Republicans used Manchin’s argument to point out that regardless of a filibuster, the voting rights legislation doesn’t have enough Democratic votes to pass the Senate: