🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
After the 2016 election, the American Left developed a new disdain for Russia. If for the longest time following the collapse of the USSR it continued treating the Eurasian bear with a kind of fascination, it now switched to blaming Hillary Clinton's surprise loss to Donald Trump on its president "stealing the election." Not only has this conspiracy theory been debunked, but Democratic partisans need to take a good look in the mirror because some of their own recent actions are best described as "Putinist."
Nominally called "president," Vladimir Putin does not run in competitive contests. His state apparatus has a firm grip on the media and he was able to circumvent the now-abolished term limits by trading places with his apprentice Dmitry Medvedev. More importantly, he managed to eliminate all serious opponents years ahead of time.
Chief among them was the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. An oil magnate with a diverse portfolio, Khodorkovsky was once the wealthiest man in the Russian Federation—his fortune was believed to amount to $15 billion in 2004. Unfortunately for him, he had political ambitions. In 2001 he established the Open Russia foundation to promote civil society in a country that had scant experience with democratic politics. Through this and other NGOs—the oligarch was said to fund most such organizations operating in the country in the early 2000s—he promoted programs for youth and journalists, and developed connections with politicians in the central legislative organ of the Russian state, the Duma. It was widely speculated that the oligarch wanted to run his candidates in the provinces with the eventual goal of becoming a prime minister and drastically reducing presidential powers. His activities alerted Putin.
In 2003 Khodorkovsky was arrested on trumped-up financial charges—tax evasion, fraud, and so on. The prosecution, which dragged on for two years, was selective and politically motivated, and to no one's surprise the magnate was sentenced to nine years in prison. Shortly before his scheduled release, he was slapped with further charges and his sentence was extended until Putin issued a pardon ahead of the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
While Khodorkovsky's trial inspired a large wave of protests, the regime continued to paint him as a criminal. Putin once opined on his case, proclaiming that "a thief should sit in jail." The regime even took pains to hint that the former oil tycoon was a homosexual.
Although he transformed himself into a high-profile political prisoner, writing New York Times editorials and gaining support of politicians and human rights organizations in the West, Khodorkovsky had no interest in leading the opposition in his native country upon his release. He immigrated to Switzerland and from there to London.
During his legal woes the oligarch lost most of his personal fortune. He is said to be worth $100 million today—not a trivial amount, to be sure, but not enough to stage a successful political campaign in a country like Russia. It's not just that Khodorkovsky was subdued; Putin's actions sent Russian oligarchs a message. They now heed the Kremlin's wishes.
A similar strategy to reduce the net worth of an oligarch to circumvent his ability to self-finance a political campaign can be detected in the very strange civil case brought against Trump by E. Jean Carroll. Carroll alleged sexual abuse and defamation by Trump and was awarded an unbelievable $83 million by a New York jury. In another civil case, Judge Arthur Engoron ordered the former president to pay more than $450 million, later reduced to $175 million.
A Manhattan jury delivered the biggest blow yet last week when it found Trump guilty of 34 counts of fraud in the case of paying hush money to Stormy Daniels. This conviction puts Democrats in a position to declare that the current White House occupant is running against a convicted felon.
If the Democrats' strategy, like Putin's, is to bankrupt and incarcerate the political opposition, they set about it in the wrong way. Putin nipped his opposition in the bud, while Trump is being dragged to court in an election year.
It's not just that one of Trump's strong suits has been his ability to generate drama and claim victimhood, and these felony charges provide him a great opportunity to do so. To stage the proceedings during the presidential campaign necessarily attracts attention. If the Democratic establishment convicted and financially ruined its political opponent years ahead of the election, it could all be forgotten by now, its target effectively neutralized. Instead, it put Trump in the spotlight, a place where he can generate sympathy for himself and anger about the American legal system.
To chose sex as a theme of the prosecutions was another unforced error. The sensational nature of the charges ensured that low-information voters were aware of the trial—but understood little about how it could be justified. Because the case looks politically motivated, running with the "convicted felon" narrative becomes problematic.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that Trump's donation page crashed due to high traffic after the verdict was announced. Considering that the polls showed the GOP candidate winning crucial swing states during the trial, at a time when he was unable to campaign, he will likely continue the winning streak.
The U.S. is not Russia. We still have a civil society, though the fate of our bottom-up social organization worries patriots enormously. It's too early to predict who will win in November, but there is no denying that the Trump trial energized the opposition instead of alienating it or sending the message that resistance is futile. It's doubtful that the apparent abuse of the judicial system will win any voters in the middle. America's own Putinism is still just half-baked.
Katya Sedgwick is a writer in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
