Despite Massive Propaganda Americans Don't Want Involvement in Ukraine

Before leaving work yesterday I saw a fundraising pitch based on Nate Silver's recent prediction that the Democrats will lose the Senate this fall. It is going to be tough for Democrats to generate any enthusiasm among their base when they are constantly saber rattling in Congress.

Today Obama is to deliver a speech in Brussels that will tack closely to themes that have proven to be a dud over the last couple of months. The floundering president will outline once again why Russia is a threat to "international norms," and he will remind Americans that the United States must stay fully engaged in Europe (as if we were reliving the days of the Berlin airlift).

But the American electorate wants nothing to do with it. This is driven home by the following paragraph from a story, "Obama Answers Critics, Dismissing Russia as a ‘Regional Power’," this morning by Michael Shear and Peter Baker:

In that poll [a survey by the Pew Research Center], conducted Thursday through Sunday, concern about Russia has increased recently, but only about a quarter of those surveyed said they viewed Russia as an adversary of the United States. About four in 10 said Russia is a serious problem, but about half said it is important for the United States not to get involved in the situation between Russia and Ukraine.

Take a moment to absorb that. After one month of panicked shrieking and constant demonizing -- really, as close as it gets to an all out information war in this country -- more than 50% of the public still says don't meddle in Ukraine. Granted, the numbers, due to the information war, have started to move in an anti-Russian direction, but nothing like the Obama administration can feel comfortable with after going all in with its strategy to vilify Putin.

Obama is weakened. I think at this point, what with Nate Silver's prediction and the president's inability to get his IMF overhaul bill through Congress along with the Ukraine bailout, there is no question that, absent some sort of bizarre, ahistoric turnaround, Obama is truly a lame duck. His approval rating languishes in the 40s, with those disapproving his performance registering over 50%.

Things are going to go from bad to worse. The New York Times is basically engaged in a blackout of news coming from inside Ukraine; it can only publish stories about "Russian provocation" in the eastern part of the country. What goes unmentioned is the turbulence within the putsch government. Ukrainian defense minister Ihor Tenyukh was dismissed the other day after troops failed to obey his command to fire on Russian forces in the Crimea. Tenyukh is a member of the fascist Svoboda party. Also going unreported in the Gray Lady is the murder of Right Sector leader Oleksandr Muzychko.

The Ukrainian putsch government is highly unstable. The Obama administration prefers that these facts are kept from the homeland; otherwise, the government has to answer for backing another failed state a la Libya. And so far "the paper of record" has proven largely compliant. Hopefully this will change.

But what will not change is the continuing hemorrhaging of the Democratic Party. Though there is no increase in popular support of the GOP, the Republicans will benefit and organized labor will shrink even smaller.