With Joe Biden looking on helplessly as Russia invades Ukraine, Democrats and their pundit and activist class have put most of their eggs in the basket of pretending that Republicans are the pro-Putin party and telling everyone that “this would be much worse if that Putin stooge Donald Trump were still in charge.” Trump, characteristically, hasn’t helped himself with his remarks. But how well is this line of argument working out for Democrats? As Ramesh Ponnuru has noted, most Republican politicians have taken a strong anti-Putin line, and polls have shown that most Republican voters are anti-Putin. In the latest Gallup survey, 88 percent of Republican voters have an unfavorable view of Russia, the same percentage as among Democratic voters.
But at least blaming Republicans for Trump will work, right? Let’s check in with the latest Harvard-Harris poll:
A new Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey released Friday found that 62 percent of those polled believed Putin would not be moving against Ukraine if Trump had been president. When looking strictly at the answers of Democrats and Republicans, 85 percent of Republicans and 38 percent of Democrats answered this way. . . . A majority of Americans polled — 59 percent — also said they believed that the Russian president moved on Ukraine because Putin saw weakness in President Biden.
Thirty-eight percent of Democrats think Trump would have prevented this. After six full years of blanket press coverage calling Trump a pawn of Putin. After the House of Representatives impeached Trump for using military aid to Ukraine as a bargaining chip for political dirt. Democrats have real problems if almost four out of ten of their own voters now trust Donald Trump on Russia more than they trust Biden.