The bigger picture

President Biden has two opponents in this race:  Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.  The two have been trying to destroy Joe Biden since he won the election in 2020.  The big question on my mind as we head into the rest of this summer and the Republican and Democratic conventions is this:  why have Democrats been helping both Trump and Putin attempt to destroy not only Biden’s candidacy and legacy but our democratic form of government?

The stakes couldn’t be higher.  Donald Trump has made it crystal clear that if he wins in November, he will end U.S. support for Ukraine and seriously damage NATO, if not end U.S. membership in the alliance altogether.  We can speculate all day long about why Trump has taken Russia’s side in Putin’s war against Ukraine and why Trump wants to bring an end to 75 years of peace and stability in Europe that NATO has established, first in defending European nations from Soviet expansionism and now, after the end of the Cold War, defending the European Union against the same evil.

But we do know this:  At the same time Trump has been promoting his opposition to U.S. membership in NATO and U.S. support for Ukraine, Putin has made clear his ambition to reestablish the old Soviet empire and dominate Europe if not most of the rest of the world.  Russia’s meddling in the recent French elections, taking the side of the right-wing and Putin-friendly National Rally party against parties of the center and left is evidence that Putin does not intend to stop his expansionistic aims with Ukraine. 

Russia already dominates Belarus and has an ally in Hungary’s proudly “illiberal” Viktor Orban.  The states of Estonia and Latvia share a border with Russia; Lithuania has a border with the avowedly hostile nation of Belarus.  All three Baltic nations know all too well the threat an unleashed Russia would pose to their sovereignty. Poland knows from long experience that it is next in Russia’s line of fire.  Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and the Baltics were all part of the Russian empire in 1914.  Vladimir Putin knows that Donald Trump has no understanding of or interest in history.  Trump probably couldn’t find Estonia or Finland on a map today, much less have any sort of knowledge of what Europe looked like when Russia, Germany, and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire dominated the European continent.

This is not just an American election.  What happens in November will affect the entire world, beginning with Ukraine and the eastern European nations but not ending there. Just imagine how Trump would treat the countries Trump referred to as “shitholes.”  Trump has already told Putin’s Russia to “do whatever they want” to any NATO nation that fails to meet his standards when it comes to maintaining what he considers an adequate defense budget.  That wasn’t a threat.  It was a statement of purpose and belief, and it sent chills down the spines of every European president, prime minister and parliament.  There were reports out of Europe at the time of Biden’s visit for the D-Day anniversary that European nations are scared to death of what another Trump presidency would mean for them. 

They are right to be frightened.  Donald Trump in the White House would cheer up authoritarians everywhere, especially Vladimir Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine has failed to enable him to take over that country as he thought he would when he sent his army across the border in February of 2022.  Trump has said he will “settle” the war in Ukraine within days of his election if he wins in November.  Ukraine knows exactly what that means – the loss of the territory Russia has already taken and a drastically destabilized country Putin would set out to dominate politically and militarily.

All of this is in the background of the American summer of political discontent, and nobody knows this better than Donald Trump and his friend Vladimir Putin, whose support for Trump is as obvious as it is dangerous to our democracy and democracies everywhere. 

I don’t care where you stand on the electability of Joe Biden or any other Democrat the party may choose to replace him if he decides to step aside.  What Democrats are doing right now, at this very minute, is being watched by Putin with barely concealed glee.  The fact that Donald Trump has spent the last two weeks puttering around fairways and greens on his golf courses tells us all we need to know about how pleased he is with the Democratic Party’s ongoing civil war.  Elected Democrats, party “strategists,” and the mainstream media have been treating this whole thing as just another turn in the horse race.  This guy is against Biden staying in, that one is for him.  Jim Clyburn’s statement yesterday that he is “all in, I’m riding with Biden” was given headlines for all the wrong reasons.    

Democrats should not be squabbling over “will he or won’t he” with the Democratic Convention less than six weeks away.  Democrats should be out there in battleground states organizing and readying get out the vote efforts for the fall.  Elected Democrats should be everywhere in their districts supporting women’s right to abortion and yelling at the top of their lungs about the threat to that right Trump has already shown himself to be, and the massive threat he would be if he attains the White House. 

It isn’t just that the right to abortion is on the ballot.  It is, but so is the right of Ukrainians to live without the constant threat of being bombed and having to defend their country from Vladimir Putin’s insane imperialistic ambitions.  The fact of the matter is this:  If Donald Trump wins in November, tens of thousands of people beyond those who have already been killed will die in Ukraine.

In this country, hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives will be at risk – pregnant women are already risking their lives in states where abortion is illegal and there are no exceptions for rape and incest and “the life of the mother” exceptions are ill-defined.  Poor children in this country are already going without meals.  The Washington Post published a story today about a woman who will not be able to feed her children because the Republican governor of Oklahoma turned down millions in federal aid for summer programs to feed hungry children.  It’s children missing meals now because of state actions.  Donald Trump will cancel school breakfast and lunch programs.  We already have children starving; it may turn into mass starvation in the wealthiest country in the world!

The lives of immigrants and their children will be at greatly increased risk.  So will the lives of unhoused people in every state.  Trump has already said he would like to see the police “shoot to kill” drug dealers, and he wants to impose the death penalty for drug and other crimes for which the death penalty has never been used.  Project 2025 has published a Trump enemies list filled with people – all of them Democrats – whom Trump has threatened to use his Department of Justice to “go after.”  What that means has not been spelled out, but we already know what has happened when arrests go wrong, and innocent people are killed in their own homes by out of control police forces.

Democrats have got to stop the internecine warfare about who is going to be at the top of the ticket and start thinking about the actual warfare that will break out if Trump wins.  It won’t be just Donald Trump who wins in America.  It will be Vladimir Putin who will win in Ukraine, and he will take a Trump victory as a free pass to put other vulnerable European countries in his gunsights.

Democrats have got to stop doing Trump’s and Putin’s work for them.  There is too much at stake for us to fuck this up.