I talked to CNN‘s Ryan Nobles about the Trump campaign’s ground game and whether it will make the difference in a race that has seen Biden maintain a steady polling lead.

“If this were the down-to-the-wire race we were all expecting through March, that ground effort would be absolutely critical to winning that last point or two at the margin,” said GOP operative Liam Donovan, who is not affiliated with the Trump campaign. “But a fraught public health environment makes the execution tougher than ever, and absent a polling error even bigger than what we saw in 2016, the states at the tipping point just don’t seem to be close enough for it to matter.”

Read the full piece here.

I spoke to Elaina Plott for her cover story for the New York Times Magazine examining the Trump legacy and the long tail of his one-dimensional takeover of the GOP.

Trump’s takeover, by contrast, has been as one-dimensional as it has been total. In the space of one term, the president has co-opted virtually every power center in the Republican Party, from its congressional caucuses to its state parties, its think tanks to its political action committees. But though he has disassembled much of the old order, he has built very little in its place.

“You end up with this weird paradox where he stands to haunt the G.O.P. for many years to come, but on the substance it’s like he was never even there,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist.

Read the full story here.

I spoke to Sam Brodey of the Daily Beast about Susan Collins’ tricky path through Maine and the attitudes of Trump voters in a politically schizophrenic state where the path to victory requires majority support.

The larger challenge for Collins, however, is that the GOP coming home may not save her from defeat.

The senator has two bigger problems, said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist who’s worked on races in the state: Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s clear statewide advantage on the presidential ticket, and Maine’s ranked choice voting system, in which candidates who get a plurality, but not a majority, of votes do not win outright.

“It matters less what the marginal Trump voter thinks and more about, are there enough Trump voters,” Donovan said. “That’s Collins’ fundamental problem: she doesn’t make her own wake anymore. She’s surfing his, and at the end of the day, he’s not doing well enough for that marginal Trump voter to matter.”

…

This is where the Trump tweet comes back into play. Some local Republicans believe that Trump, in his way, was strategically trying to help Collins—giving her a “maverick” appeal by attacking her in a state where he is less popular, Winter theorized.

But many more have a hard time buying that Trump, who is on record predicting he will win Maine, was actually trying to help Collins in a roundabout way. A “three-dimensional chess move,” said Donovan, “is not what this is. It’s not helpful, it’s a distraction.”

Read the full piece here.

I spoke to James Oliphant of Reuters about the final Presidential debate and whether the President’s performance will move the race.

Thursday’s debate in Nashville, Tennessee, was the last time for both candidates to share a stage before a large television audience, and Trump engaged in a more civil discourse with far fewer interruptions than at their first debate in September.

“Trump was fine tonight. Might even give it to him on points. It’s just not the game-changer he needs,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist in Virginia who has worked on U.S. Senate campaigns.

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Trump’s vulnerability on the pandemic has forced him to turn to other stratagems to try to get back in the race, including aiming to brand Biden as a corrupt politician in the same manner he attempted to do with Democrat Hillary Clinton four years ago before he edged out a narrow victory.

Donovan said the gambit would yield diminishing returns in an election where voters have far greater concerns.

“It just feels like a ham-fisted attempt to reprise 2016, which worked – barely – because a dozen things went exactly right, and people had nothing else to worry about,” he said.

Read the full piece here.

I spoke to Jeff Stein of the Washington Post about Congressional Republicans’ reservations over the ongoing Covid stimulus negotiations being led by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.

Liam Donovan, a Republican political strategist, said that there is “broad frustration” among GOP lawmakers over the emerging package. “There are zero policy wins in here for [Republicans], just swallowing slightly watered-down Heroes,” Donovan said, citing provisions related to taxpayer-funded abortions as well as the potential expansion of ACA credits. The Heroes Act is the multi-trillion-dollar relief bill passed by the House.

Read the full piece here.