I spoke with Alex Seitz-Wald of NBC News about the phenomenon of deep blue states electing Republican governors in the age of Trump:

It’s a familiar script to the one employed by other blue-state Republican governors, including Charlie Baker in Massachusetts and Larry Hogan in Maryland, who is on a campaign swing with Democrats who support him.

“In a counterintuitive way, the polarized national environment accentuates the very things that make these figures appealing,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican consultant. “Moderate sensibility focused on local policy issues rather than political wedges, capacity (indeed, necessity) to work in a bipartisan way, and a tone that resonates regardless of party.”

Read the entire piece here.

I spoke with Claire Williams of Morning Consult about President Trump’s recent floating of a middle class tax cut and the political impact of TCJA (or lack thereof):

And Trump’s bid to capitalize on the strong market performance could have a downside. A market rout on Wednesday sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbling more than 600 points and the Nasdaq down 4.4 percent, although most major market indicators largely recovered a day later. Despite any volatility in the market, GOP strategists hope voters will take a longer-term view of the economy.

“Big picture over the past two years, the job market is doing very well,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist and lobbyist. “We’ll see if there’s a blip. What’s on the front pages in the next few weeks could matter on the margins.”

Read the entire piece here.

Mic nabbed my tweet about the political value of righteous fury:

Experts seem to think Republican excitement, which is now fueled by elation that their party notched a win, is momentary and will fade as the election draws near, while Democratic enthusiasm — which is fueled by anger — will sustain itself.

“Anger is electoral rocket fuel,” Republican strategist Liam Donovan tweeted, but added that for Republicans it’s “harder to sustain when you get what you want.”

https://twitter.com/LPDonovan/status/1047884840316690433

Read the entire piece here.

I spoke with E.J. Graff, managing editor of The Monkey Cage Blog, for a piece in POLITICO Magazine exploring shifting gender dynamics within the GOP coalition:

“If these trends continue,” political scientist Melissa Deckman of Washington College told me, “women’s preference for Democrats will be a big contributor to the midterm results.”

And beyond the midterms, too. “Once you give up that party label, you’re less inclined to easily take it back,” says University of Virginia political scientist Jennifer Lawless. Liam Donovan, a lobbyist and former National Republican Senatorial Committee staffer, notes that the Republican loss of college-educated white women “is not balanced out by a huge spike among white men—on net, that’s a real problem for the Republicans.” Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, of all people, put it more starkly this summer: “The Republican college-educated woman is done. They’re gone. They were going anyway at some point in time. Trump triggers them.”

…

Donovan, the former NRSC staffer, says he wonders how far women who leave the GOP will actually go. Will they call themselves independents who tend to lean Republican, akin to leaving the team’s clubhouse but staying in its yard? Putative independents who aren’t registered with one party but who tell pollsters that they nonetheless sympathize with one party, Lawless explains, tend to vote for that party’s ticket as reliably as those who embrace the party label. That means the big question is whether, as she puts it, “these women who are saying the Republican Party no longer represents them and are eschewing the party label—will they still lean Republican?”

…

Of course, a lot rides on what the Republican Party does in the years ahead. Certainly, by saying recently that it’s “a very scary time” to be a young man, Trump has “put the pedal to the metal” on the GOP’s appeal to angry white blue-collar men, Donovan says. But as Masket put it, “There are a lot of young women coming of age in this presidency who will vote for the first time either this year or in 2020, with this very stark view of gender relations between the two parties.” He sees the Ford/Kavanaugh hearings as a powerful influence at such a formative moment for social identity: “Those images aren’t ones that go away very quickly.”

Read the entire piece here.

I spoke with Benjy Sarlin of NBC News about the “Kavanaugh effect” and its potential impact on the midterm election:

Republicans celebrated the reaction to Kavanaugh’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee after limited polling suggested their voters had closed the enthusiasm gap with Democrats. But some strategists are concerned about how far the ‘Kavanaugh effect’ can carry the party post-confirmation and a month of unpredictable news cycles lies ahead until Election Day.

“I certainly think this exercise woke (Republicans) up and hit the right electoral pleasure centers, which we seem to be seeing reflected in some of the polling, but my fear would be peaking a hair too soon,” Liam Donovan, a former staffer at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told NBC News.

Read the entire piece here.