Since Russia invaded the Ukraine, the U.S. news media has focused nearly exclusively on the war underway.  Wars are attention-grabbers, so news coverage makes sense.  Certainly, a war of aggression by nuclear-armed Russia in Europe merits significant coverage, though we can do without the snap analyses, ridiculous speculation based on sketchy or false reports, and warmongering.  

Domestic news coverage has been light.  There’s been some reporting on blue states and cities ending ludicrous mask mandates, except for kids five and younger in New York City.  Those poor kids will still have to wear unsanitary obedience rags at school.  Hikes in gas prices get mentioned.  Turbulence in the stock markets gets a word.  Otherwise, it’s Ukraine 24/7.

But that won’t last.  And it’s silly to think that the war has distracted Americans from the country’s festering domestic woes.  Sillier still is the idea that the Russia-Ukraine conflict is Biden’s means of offloading the troubles he’s created.  Biden and his hapless White House handlers would surely love to pin Biden’s across-the-board failures on a distant war.  But a majority of Americans aren’t suckers.      

Come November, provided Biden and his crack team haven’t blundered us into war with Russia -- never discount Biden’s knack for sheer incompetence -- voters are poised to deliver a slap-down to Democrats that rivals or surpasses the whippin’ Democrats received in the 2010 midterms.  Let’s add the proviso that if the elections are honest.  Mail-in balloting is opened to all sorts of mischief.    

In 2010, Obama’s vaunted charisma failed to blunt not only massive Democrat losses in the U.S. House (the GOP picked up 63 seats, the most since 1948), while ceding five seats and the majority to the GOP in the U.S. Senate, but Democrats dropped six governorships and hundreds of state legislative seats.  An argument can be made that 2010 was the beginning of a creeping realignment. 

The crew at the Last Refuge (AKA Conservative Treehouse) says that the Ukrainian conflict was “manufactured” as a means of foisting Biden-made woes onto that war.  They’re persuaded that voters are being duped.  From a February 28 article at the Last Refuge:

The manufactured Russia-Ukraine crisis now becomes the cover story for why the U.S. economy is collapsing.  The pain being felt by middle class, blue-collar workers is now shifted to be an outcome of geopolitical events that are Vladimir Putin’s fault. It’s always someone else’s fault.

And then this take:

Do not underestimate how many people in the U.S. will buy into this nonsense, and keep in mind the Republican wing of the UniParty has a vested interest in allowing the narrative to embed in the psyche of voters.  Both wings of the DC vulture will help promote this fraud, just as both wings of the DC uniparty sold out our Main Street economy on behalf of their multinational benefactors.

I’m certainly more receptive today to the idea of conspiracies in politics than I was prior to Donald Trump’s ascendency (The Russia Collusion Hoax is as real as it gets, and let’s hope John Durham actually rolls up indictments, including the biggest fish in the Clinton campaign).

For the sake of discussion, let’s accept that the Russia-Ukraine war is a diversion enabled by higher ups in the executive branch to dump Biden’s domestic troubles onto Putin and the crisis in Ukraine.  Putin was baited into war.  Then we’re to accept that voters -- let’s specify a majority -- will be conned into absolving Biden of blame for growing domestic difficulties.  

But here’s why that argument doesn’t wash, conspiracy or not: Biden’s troubles began on his first day in office, which predate the Russia-Ukraine war by better than a year. 

One of Biden’s first acts was to put the kibosh on the Keystone XL pipeline followed by clamping down on oil and gas exploration and drilling leases on federal lands.  Biden has often publicly ballyhooed inane green energy goals for the nation.  As a candidate, he even said: “I guarantee you. We're going to end fossil fuel.” 

A majority of voters aren’t buying that the nation’s energy price spikes -- evident not only at gas pumps, but in grocery stores and in the costs of home heating, etc. -- only began this past February with the Ukraine crisis.  The facts are too well established for people to be so easily tricked. 

Moreover, importantly, all politics are local and personal.  Middle- and working-class Americans are seeing their paychecks shrink daily as their family budgets continue to stretch.  That’s happened for many months now.  Don’t forget that the median household income is a modest $62,000.  Certainly, families with yearly incomes higher than $62 thousand are feeling the energy driven inflation bite, too.  Inflation is also rising due to profligate federal spending and unconscionable money-printing by the Federal Reserve.

Americans get that it was Biden, not Putin, who ended U.S. energy independence.  Blaming the Russia-Ukraine war for any oil and gas supply disruptions and higher prices only blows back on Biden.  He can't escape the responsibility for making the U.S. vulnerable to foreign suppliers, be it the Russians or Saudis or -- unbelievably -- Iranians. 

Are most voters so gullible as to believe that the ongoing supply chain issues are Putin’s handiwork, too?  Or are a majority of Americans fairly well apprised that Biden and the glib incompetent that he appointed U.S. Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg are to blame for failing to smartly address supply chain challenges?      

How will Democrats hang the dissolution of the U.S.-Mexican border on Putin and the war?  Not incidentally, Biden and his handlers opened up the southern border as a matter of policy, not from bungling incompetence.  It was deliberate because Democrats have had a longstanding aim of creating new, dependent constituencies for their political benefit.  The left has long desired to “transform” the U.S. into a Third World dystopia. 

Voters will ask why Biden is eager to defend Ukraine’s borders but not our own. 

Unless the polling is cockeyed, Americans strongly oppose Biden’s border policy.  Those waves of illegals are impacting communities across the country, as Biden violates his oath of office by transporting them to communities far from the southern border.  Come November, voters will blame Biden and Democrats for that, not Vlad Putin and his fellow Russian oligarchs.

As of March 7, Rasmussen Reports staked Biden to a 44 approve/54 disapprove overall.  Drill down deeper and Biden’s numbers among the “strongly approve” and “strongly disapprove” bode ill for Democrats this November.  Only 23% of respondents strongly approve Biden’s job performance, while 45% strongly disapprove.  Intensity matters when it comes to voter motivation.

An earlier (February 22) Trafalgar Group survey shows an even worse picture for Biden and Democrats.  In that poll, Biden is strongly approved by 22% of likely voters while 52% strongly disapprove.  Whether you want to go with the Trafalgar Group numbers or Rasmussen Reports’ findings, for Democrats, it’s a matter of picking their poison.

Biden’s approval numbers actually represent an uptick in his support.  Count that as an anomaly, a small bubble that will burst in the coming months.  Why?  The troubles that Biden created won’t disappear.    

As always, we have to issue a qualification: November is still a long way off, and much can transpire between now and then to change political fortunes.  But the betting is that the nation’s difficulties will only worsen, and that voter perceptions -- bolstered by hard facts -- of Biden and his Democrats are too deeply ingrained for a majority to suddenly do an about-face.  And as much as Democrat spinners and their propagandist allies in the establishment media may try, they won’t succeed in hanging Biden’s abysmal performance on Vladimir Putin.    

J. Robert Smith can be found regularly at Gab @JRobertSmith.  He also blogs at Flyover.  

Image: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine