Less than 30% of the US public wants the United States to continue to fund the war in Ukraine.
Scott Jennings has famously suggested that Donald Trump's superpower is to take a popular position which seems to force Democrats to defend the losing position, because they cannot stop themselves from opposing Trump. We have seen Democrats take the losing side on border crossings, trans-issues, and now they appear to be taking the losing side on the war in Ukraine as well.
The hard part with Ukraine for the Democrats is that the pro-Ukraine position has crashed over time and I am not so sure that they really understand how far it has fallen. At the beginning of the war, there was a lot of solidarity. Six months ago, there was still 40-45 percent of Americans willing to keep funding the war effort in Ukraine. But more recent polls taken since Trump has taken over suggests that the aid to Ukraine is not longer a popular position. Most would like to see a peace negotiated rather than additional funding to keep Ukraine fighting. By most, I am saying over 70% of the public want a negotiated peace settlement in Ukraine.
But not Democrats. They believe this is just and right, so we much continue sending billions.
Now this is an almost bizarre piece of logic. Apparently since Ukraine has been holding off Russia for most of three years, and only giving up ground in small chunks, there is this sort of delusion of grandeur from the left that defies reality. In their minds Zelensky is a hero and the Ukraine army is a band of knights in shining armor fending off an evil army led by someone no better than Sauron from LOTR. Because of this noble effort by great people, we need to supply all the funding to make sure that they keep up the good fight. This is being treated almost as if this is a movie, or a video game, where destruction and death is okay as long as the underdogs are given a chance to win in the end.
Of course, many actually believe that the underdogs (in every sense of the term) are going to win a war of attrition if they just keep fighting. Putin will eventually just throw in the towel and suggest that those pesky Ukrainians are too tough and he will just slink on back to Russia and pull out of all of the occupied areas, Zelensky will destroy the one ring, and everyone will celebrate.
Ahem...
But this is reality. The Riders of Rohan are not just over the horizon ready to ride in and save the day. Ukraine has lost tens of thousands of soldiers, as many as thirty thousand civilians are dead. They have hundreds of thousands wounded, both soldiers and civilians. Many parts of the country have been turned to rubble, and as many as five million Ukrainians have fled the country. Most shockingly, according to reports, they are basically having to go out and literally take military aged men off the street and escort them by force to the front lines to keep the fight up. They are running out of people to fight this war.
There is nothing glorious and nothing noble about what is happening in Ukraine right now. Perhaps from our safe distance, this is little more than a political proxy fight between those who wear a Ukrainian flag on their lapel and those who don't. But people are dying in a manner not seen in decades in a war worse than most have seen in their lifetimes. This is not about American political ego at this point. This is about the humanitarian reality that war is hell and the Ukrainians are the ones mostly suffering right now.
If I didn't know any better, I might believe that there are liberals and even Democrats in office that would prefer to allow Ukraine to continue to lose a war bit by bit by bit than to allow Trump to be seen as the person who brokered peace. If that is the case, well then shame on them.
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