WaPo: Why Sanders, AOC threw Biden a lifeline as his candidacy floundered

I spoke to Jeff Stein for his Washington Post piece on the decision of high profile progressives to bail out Joe Biden when his candidacy was on the ropes.

Liam Donovan, a GOP strategist, said the endorsements from Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez reflect the reality that any replacement at the top of the Democratic ticket would be less likely to cater to the left than Biden, who has stocked his administration with former staffers to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

“The support reflects the fact that Biden has tacked strongly to the left since winning the 2020 primary as an amiable centrist, and any non-Biden alternative is apt to be less aligned with the progressive agenda,” Donovan said.

But while “AOC and company boosting Biden at a perilous moment may help him secure the nomination,” Donovan added, “it doesn’t help him claw back in the Rust Belt states that will decide this election.”

Read the full piece here.

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Boston Globe: Is Project 2025, Trump’s right-wing agenda, Biden’s rescue plan?

I spoke to the Boston Globe’s Sam Brodey for his piece about Project 2025 and its utility for the embattled Biden campaign.

Some Republicans see the political calculations at play and grant they could be effective. Liam Donovan, a longtime GOP staffer and lobbyist, said the focus on Project 2025 could “keep the heat off [Biden] long enough to get him through this stretch.”If Biden does, Donovan predicted Project 2025 could remain a Democratic rallying cry. “It’s like it’s, Remember the Alamo, right?” he said. “It’s going to be a pithy phrase that serves as a call to, ‘I don’t care how you feel about Joe Biden or whether you feel like voting … it’s too important because of Project 2025.’”

This deserves its own post, because the hysteria over what is a pretty standard, public facing, and transparent thought leadership effort by a well-known and well-credentialed think tank is totally over the top, but the strategy is clear, and rather clever. Rather than handwaving about the fate of democracy or other cringe hyperbole, Dems now have a shorthand for how to point to the policy stakes of this election, a single phrase that can redirect from frustration with Biden to fear of Trump. It has clearly found traction on the left, and the Trump campaign is not taking any chances, distancing themselves from the exercise, as they have done with all unsanctioned transition efforts as far back as last year. One thing I haven’t seen noted elsewhere as the story picks up steam is that the official Trump Transition will be up and running soon, with a team sanctioned both by the campaign, and by the U.S. Government via the Presidential Transition Act. Not as much fun as the Heritage bogeyman, but at some level more revealing.

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Semafor: Trump and Biden are competing to QB the Super Bowl of tax policy

I spoke to Joseph Zeballos-Roig for his Semafor piece with Jordan Weissman on the massive tax policy stakes of the 2024 election. In their comprehensive look at the looming “Super Bowl of Tax,” they asked me who is most influential in Trump’s orbit on these issues. (I don’t think they took my answer of “the last person he talked to” as seriously as it easily intended.) My response:

“He gravitates toward donors and other people he views as successful; people he sees on CNBC and Fox Business; and people he trusts as loyal whose positions line up with his instincts,” said Liam Donovan, a GOP strategist. “That’s the Venn Diagram, and it sometimes results in a hodgepodge of policy prescriptions.”

Read the full piece here.

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POLITICO Mag: Mitch McConnell: Hero or Villain?

I was asked to contribute to an “expert roundup” for POLITICO Magazine on McConnell’s retirement. It’s interesting mix of admirers, haters, and notable formers including a Speaker, a McConnell chief, a Reid staffer, multiple Kentucky statewide elected officials alongside various pundits, politicos, and professors.

Their version clipped what I thought was the upshot of my piece, so I put the third paragraph on my substack (and below), along with a callback to an earlier profile I participated in.

My submission:

Mitch McConnell will depart his post as GOP leader later this year an icon to his allies and an archvillain to his enemies — and he wouldn’t have it any other way. What else can you say about a man who takes such obvious relish in being cast as the grim reaper of the Senate? Who not only collects unflattering political cartoons, but displays them on his wall. Who gamely plays the mirthless baddie, serving alternatively as primary pin cushion and general election shield. Whose egoless, unsentimental devotion to power and the wielding thereof remains the hallmark of his record-setting tenure at the helm of the Republican Conference.

His exit is bittersweet, both for himself and for the GOP. His single most consequential act as leader — and make no mistake, the election-year blockade of Merrick Garland was the most audacious decision in the history of congressional leadership — helped usher in a president who would cement his legacy, transform his party and ultimately confound his ability to lead it in any meaningful way, an irony that is surely not lost on McConnell.

For better or worse, the Republican Party McConnell leaves behind is not the one he enlisted in so many decades ago as a young Louisville attorney. It’s not even the one he found when he reached the top rung nearly two decades ago. It is a party in transition, one that doesn’t quite know where it wants to go or what it wants to stand for, except in boisterous, disdainful, reflexive opposition to the political class and its sensibilities. McConnell’s decision is as much a function of this reality as it is an acknowledgement that time has finally caught up to him. To his credit—unlike certain politicians—he is stepping aside for a new generation of leaders to take the reins. Love him or hate him, the institution will be worse off for his relegation.

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