Kursk 2.0: Crashing Putin’s System

Introduction

A week into Ukraine’s counter-invasion of russia, it’s hard to overstate how much of a turning point the Kursk operation may turn out to be. There’s a lot that could still go wrong, of course, but the degree of surprise that Ukraine achieved has given it a step up on countering ruscist efforts to limit the damage.

Given that I talk so much about prediction and forecasting, I owe readers a brief explanation for why I failed to see this coming. Now, I have been one of the few people over the past year who insisted that Ukraine would go on the attack as soon as it possibly could, once ammunition supplies were restored and new personnel mobilized. But I can in no way claim to have predicted that Ukraine would use its own forces on ruscist soil.

The reason I didn’t suspect this was an option is that I assumed the use of regular Ukrainian formations across the international border would be counterproductive in military and political terms. And for the first year and a half of the conflict this was absolutely the case, with allied reactions to incursions by Free Russian forces operating on Ukrainian soil ranging from discouraging to hostile. I failed to update this standing assumption even though it probably became obsolete once Moscow re-invaded Kharkiv, which that appears to have violated a tacit agreement between DC and Moscow about the scope of the conflict after 2022.

It wasn’t a bad assumption, and one that in theory a proper border defense force should have served as a solid hedge against. On the military side, Moscow can use conscripts freely inside its internationally accepted borders, bolstering available troop numbers. In theory, Moscow could deploy only conscripts – of which it has a couple hundred thousand at any given time – to respond to Ukraine’s offensive. This would allow the orcs to maintain the current tempo of operations elsewhere, meaning that a Ukrainian assault would only stretch its own resources thin.

Relying on poorly trained and equipped conscripts is always a dangerous choice, but given the political danger of allied support declining if Ukraine was perceived to be escalating the conflict with no material gain, the overall cost-benefit of an invasion just didn’t look attractive. When Ukraine was low on shells and hadn’t yet tripled the rate at which it is turning out new soldiers, opening a major new front would be foolish anyway.

You always have to make certain fundamental assumptions when building a model. Something that most professionals who make a living interpreting statistical models for the media assiduously avoid talking about is the fact that a lot of what they present as objective contains a lethal seed of subjective bias. This winds up being the source of their most epic failed predictions.

Assumptions are always made, and when one is proven faulty a model breaks. You get behavior that seems unpredictable but really isn’t; the model was just improperly calibrated. There are true random events that go beyond a model’s scope, but in this case all that was required was a refresh of a core assumption.

A good model offers both predictive value – saying where Ukraine is more or less likely to mount an offensive – and is also robust to any single assumption being proven incorrect. And though I got the detail about where Ukraine would strike wrong, overall the operation fits well with my conception of applying anarchist systems destruction warfare to the problem of defeating Putin.

In other words, it wasn’t a surprising surprise. Opening up ruscist territory to physical occupation only leads to a few operations that make sense. This is one of them.

Regardless, Ukraine just called into question the basic rationale for the Putin regime’s existence. There are few more fitting humiliations for a leader like Putin to be proven incapable of defending a region that sits directly between Kyiv and Moscow.

While the orcs are still crawling forward in Pokrovsk, Toretsk, Chasiv Yar, and Kupiansk, their progress stands in stark contrast to what Ukraine has achieved in less than a week with a much smaller force. And Ukraine is growing stronger by the month – it did not commit all or even most of its reserves to the operation.

Weekly Overview

With so much good news coming from Kursk, it’s easy to lose sight of the difficult conditions Ukrainian forces are operating under elsewhere. A big part of the reason why Ukraine seemed to so easily burst through the orc defenses was a lack of experienced ruscist troops holding them. They’re busy on other fronts.

In Kursk, border troops also appear to lack the dense drone-artillery links that let ruscist forces quickly respond to Ukrainian movements. The brigades operating in Kursk appear to be able to supply themselves without facing drone barrages starting five or even twenty-five kilometers from the front. That’s the biggest reason why it was smart of Ukraine to commit combat power in Kursk rather than send it to Pokrovsk to mount a counterattack there.

Moscow’s push towards Pokrovsk has not ceased, with Ukrainian forces apparently trying to slow down the pace of advance and deflect it into lowland areas where defenders on the flanks can inflict maximum damage. I long expected Moscow to advance north from Avdiivka and Ocheretyne, not west, partly because that would pair better with the attacks on Toretsk and Chasiv Yar but also because the terrain gets tougher the closer to Pokrovsk you get.

Effective combat power declines the farther you get from your logistics base. In Ukraine, large settlements are essential for hiding troops and supplies. Ones with lots of reinforced concrete structures also make for excellent defensive positions.

An old idea, the loss of strength gradient, is useful here. It speaks to the fact that logistics costs tend to increase exponentially as you get farther away from a supply base. Eventually your logistics train will consume more supplies than it can deliver to the front. It’s a problem common to many systems.

Ukrainian forces have been pushed back about half the distance between Pokrovsk and Avdiivka over the past six months. But not only did Ukraine cover the same distance in Kursk in only six days, now life gets even tougher for the orcs. They’re within easy artillery range of the town while their own guns have to be supplied across ground Ukrainian drones routinely hit. That’s a hazard of an extended front.

Interestingly, Ukrainian forces appear to be planning to dig in about halfway between Sumy and Kursk, chief cities of their respective districts. The ruscist invasion of Kharkiv district this year stalled out at just about the halfway point between Kharkiv and Belgorod. Geography matters.

Moscow’s offensive on the Pokrovsk axis is ill-conceived even if several lunges have been competently executed. If the effort to reach Lyman northeast of Sloviansk or the push south through eastern Kharkiv had been a success, then Moscow getting close to the Pokrovsk-Kostiantynivka highway would be a very bad thing. But there are alternate routes to get supplies to Toretsk.

The situation there remains difficult, however, with Moscow slowly consolidating control over the outer defensive perimeter, including most of Niu-York. Here too the going should get tougher as operations draw closer to the town, meaning that Moscow really needs success to the north and east to bring it into partial encirclement.

Any move to the east appears to be constrained by Ukraine’s firm control over the ridge that hosts the Avdiivka-Kostiantynivka route. I expect that Ukraine has been aware of the threat of a push north from Avdiivka and built strong defenses here, explaining Moscow’s efforts to go around this zone. Given Ukraine’s success in Kursk, it is not unreasonable to think that in a month or two a sudden local counteroffensive might hit Moscow’s exposed northern flank and wipe out a division. The front line here is still just 10km from Ocheretyne.

The orc assault on Chasiv Yar has continued, but aside from a bit of movement over the underground portion of the canal Putin’s troops have been held back. Their failure greatly complicates the assault on Toretsk.

Moscow has also continued operations in the Vuhledar and Krasnohorivka sectors, pressing Ukrainian forces back by a few blocks or fields in each. I’m hopeful that this will be one of the first areas to lose operational reserves to the Kursk front. The situation is not critical, but Ukrainian forces here could use a break.

Speaking of brigades that deserve one, back up north the orcs are still applying pressure to the Siversk bulge. They also managed to slightly expand their offensive towards the Oskil river in Kupiansk. Third Assault, 77th Airmobile, and the 43rd and 44th Mechanized Brigades are reportedly responsible for this sector, with 3A having launched some neat local spoiling attacks on their own initiative.

The biggest immediate beneficiary of the Kursk operation has been Ukrainian units north of Kharkiv, where Moscow was reportedly building up reserves to try and seize Vovchansk north of the Vovcha. It seems a portion of these were the first to be diverted. Ukraine might be shifting its own reserves built up in this sector to Kursk, or waiting for enough orcs to leave to initiate an offensive here.

So far there’s been no word about what Ukraine’s Viper fleet is up to, but at least Moscow hasn’t been able to destroy any jets on the ground yet. Ukraine’s campaign against Putin’s airfields in russia is ongoing, scoring another notable win this past week by taking down a second warehouse full of glide bombs and other ammunition. Hitting these is as good as blowing up aircraft, inflicting substantial damage to everything around them and complicating future operations.

I do wonder what Ukraine is using to take them out. Drones don’t carry large warheads, though a shaped charge might compensate. Another possibility is that Ukraine is mixing Neptun cruise missiles in with the drone raids for added kick. This could explain why one of the recent airbase strikes took out a fuel depot that I’m pretty sure was underground until Ukraine forcibly excavated the thing.

Factories, oil refineries, fuel depots, air bases, and bridges are the sorts of targets that, if repeatedly struck, encourage the collapse of an over-extended military system. Whether you call this strategic bombardment or something else, the goal is the same: reduce the throughput of vital materials to the enemy’s war economy and supplies to the front.

Effective battlefield operations burn the enemy’s candle at both ends, increasing the demand for resources even as supply is constrained. If you have adequate insight into how the enemy’s system operates and can monitor its behavior, vulnerabilities will invariably emerge as the system seeks to stabilize itself by cannibalizing and triaging resources.

Of course, before I get into the Kursk Campaign and its immense potential, it’s worth noting something about Ukraine’s own military system. Many Ukrainian media outlets have interviewed soldiers with frontline units who commented on the lack of replacements they see.

I have a strong suspicion that Ukraine is in the process of rebooting its ground forces through a process of triage that flows resources to units that prove themselves in the field. Certain brigades with effective staffs and leaders may even be expanded into something more like a division.

This is a proven technique, but it comes with a harsh flip side: some units get starved of reinforcements until they’re simply ineffective, at which point they’re rotated to the rear and probably reconstructed. A hazard of successful operations like the one in Kursk is that it can exacerbate feelings in battered brigades of being treated unfairly. This can lead to persistent low morale that in turn causes a cycle of under-investment and poor performance. A unit so afflicted can quickly become a liability under fire.

I’m not saying that this is definitely happening, but it’s a risk to be wary of. With Moscow trying to target the weakest member of the herd, so to speak, Ukraine may have to consider pulling some brigades for reconstruction and deploying newly raised ones sooner than it would like.

Notably, all of the brigades confirmed to be operating in Kursk are experienced outfits that have been relatively quiet for the past few months. 80th Air Assault was fighting in Krasnohorivka as of July before Ukraine quietly pulled out.

22nd Mechanized Brigade was on the Chasiv Yar front near Klischiivka well into June, though possibly acting as a reserve. The two brigades that appeared in geoconfirmed footage after the initial attack was a success, 61st and 116th Mechanized, appear to be fresher, the former not heavily used recently and the latter bouncing around fronts as an apparent operational reserve.

It’s difficult to be sure who is where, of course, relying on open source information. The press gets a lot flat-out wrong, and then there’s the fact that a brigade isn’t like a ship with a crew that generally sticks together throughout a deployment. In ground warfare individual soldiers rarely have connection with anything higher than the battalion level because it would be way too much of a load for a brigade staff to control dozens of separate companies or even platoons.

In practice, brigades swap out subordinate battalions and companies all the time depending on the mission. A brigade is best seen as a container that smaller formations can be plugged into. It is entirely possible for a battalion nominally assigned to the 82nd Air Assault Brigade to be “chopped” to the 80th to act as part of a maneuver group breaching into enemy territory.

That may be why so many sources seem to vary on what brigades are involved in the Kursk campaign. So far there is no evidence of the Challengers, Strykers, and Marders associated with 82nd Air Assault participating in this offensive. Similarly the Bradleys allegedly with 22nd Mechanized might not exist. None have been blown up yet, at least.

My suspicion is that heavy modern gear is not being risked on russian soil in large quantities out of concern that its loss might be used to argue that Ukraine’s partners shouldn’t send more. This was the net effect of the reporting by Michael Kofman, Robert Lee, David Axe, and other widely cited commentators after Ukraine’s 2023 campaign ran into trouble.

The Kursk operation has clearly been designed to test American boundaries as much as Putin’s remaining power. It’s notable that the response to it has been led by the Pentagon, which will only affirm Ukraine’s right of self-defense.

It’s good that defense officials are the ones setting the narrative, likely taking the lead because the White House doesn’t want to come anywhere near this. Their bland characterization gives away the discomfort felt by their political bosses, as does the media pushing it well below coverage of the upcoming Democratic Party convention.

In theory, this is the sort of thing that could trigger a geopolitical explosion. It probably won’t, with Putin already trying to downplay the severity of the situation. But the risk of an even bigger war impacting the US presidential election has the pundits nervous. You know it by the fact they avoid talking about it. The same is true of the potential for America breaking up in the coming years, just like russia.

Kursk And Dismantling Moscow’s Power System

I am very confident that Ukraine will not seek to capture the Kursk nuclear power plant. Moving in its direction, however, is definitely part of the message that Ukraine is trying to send with the Kursk campaign. Not only because this reveals how incredibly weak and foolish Putin is for starting this war in the first place, but also that the Biden Administration’s preferred argument about not giving Ukraine all the weapons it needs to win and imposing arbitrary range restrictions is badly flawed.

If Moscow poses such a grave threat that NATO must be prepared for an assault on its territory at any time but also avert war at any cost, something is rotten with the NATO conception of deterrence because it isn’t credible. War is war: the only reliable way to stop the enemy from hurting you is to make them want to. For Ukraine that means inflicting so much damage on the ruscist empire that the regime pulls away from the occupation to save itself.

The most honest thing that Putin has said in years is that Ukraine has attacked Kursk seeking instability in russia. Exactly: they seek to unseat his regime by proving that it can’t protect its own. If Moscow can’t do that, what is it for?

This is why Ukraine appears determined to stay in Free Kursk unless Moscow commits substantial forces, likely everything it can spare, to push Ukraine’s brigades out. So far as I can tell, the operation was planned to be easy to unwind if it ran into heavy resistance – but also equipped to quickly consolidate territory once taken. That’s happening right now, Ukraine dominating major transportation routes and relying on drones to detect and strike anything moving between.

Ukraine appears to have begun the operation a week ago with a limited but very intense assault using two battalions, individual company sized strike teams hitting targets a kilometer or two apart. This wasn’t a multi-brigade assault, but a ruthless elimination of a pair of orc battalions mostly staffed with conscripts to cover the part of the border near Sudzha.

Reportedly neither troops along the border nor the Chechen paramilitaries covering the area behind put up much of a fight. They were shocked by the intensity of an attack that wasn’t supposed to happen, even though they knew Ukraine was building up substantial forces. Their commanders in Kursk didn’t heed the warning or react in time, and when they did dispatch heavier equipment Ukraine destroyed it in ambushes.

In the first two days, the lead battlegroups of the 80th and 22nd each cut a 10km hole in their assigned area then merged the breaches into one. Battlegroups were then sent racing deeper into ruscist territory to seize positions on the higher ground north of the breach and to outflank Sudzha. They also severed a railway used to transport supplies from Kursk to Belgorod.

Days three and four saw Ukraine commit elements of the second echelon to secure captured ground and help the lead echelons move even farther, with soldiers from the 61st taking a group portrait by the Sudzha gas metering station. A drone with the 116th caught sight of Moscow’s own reserves near Rylsk. A column of more than a dozen trucks packed with soldiers parked bumper to bumper in a village and absorbed a HIMARS salvo.

Ukrainian estimates put the total fatalities at close to 500, a full orc battalion. I’d estimate it was at least a third of that, since while you can pack thirty people into the back of a truck, that doesn’t leave much room for stuff like guns. On the drone feed at least several dozen figures were seen scurrying towards houses even as the second, third, and fourth GLMRLS rounds hit the convoy. Locals in the area reportedly found casings from submunitions canisters, implying that cluster warheads arrived too, but anyone who inside might have survived.

Video shot by a passerby shows a whole lot of charred bodies being loaded into the back of newly arrived trucks by soldiers who look utterly shattered. The loss of that battalion could be why Ukrainian forces pushed halfway to Rylsk, at last word in control of the outskirts of Korenovo and sending scout parties further on.

The introduction of additional brigades allowed Ukraine’s advance units to leap a full 30km from the border. By days five and six Ukrainian artillery began to appear on russian territory 15km beyond the border, implying that Ukraine is in firm control of a cluster of villages supported by a solid road network. That has allowed combat units to press on Korenovo, Kromskie Bykie, and Bol’shoye Soldatskoye – the last fully halfway to Kursk.

On the flanks of the incursion Ukraine has been slowly rolling back ruscist border positions to negate the potential for a counterattack in the rear of Ukraine’s advancing units. It’s a sign of how bad Moscow feels its position is that major defensive lines are being dug just south of Kursk and the Kursk nuclear power plant. Moscow may have only limited ability to support troops operating in the Rylsk area, meaning that a defensive line west of the Rylsk-Sudzha line could soon fall into Ukrainian hands.

My sense of Ukraine’s plan from here is that its advance forces will dig in on the eastern flank, aiming to reach a line running from approximately Skorodnoe to Belitsa, just 10km east of where Ukrainian forces are now. The first wave of orc reinforcements will have to be thrown back, but this should be doable while Ukraine still has superiority in the drone space thanks to intense electronic warfare and drone interceptor work, both reportedly important features of the success of the operation so far.

To the north Ukrainian forces should have more space to work with if they can overcome the reinforcements moving west from Kursk. However, if Ukraine can hang on to the crossroads at Kromskie Byki, that in conjunction with a defensible eastern flank should let Ukrainian forces take Rylsk before Moscow can push in reserves.

If Ukraine wants to hold what it has taken, it has to eliminate the threat posed by ruscist units operating on the western flank of the present incursion. Ukraine is essentially in a race to secure a chunk of territory that’s easier to defend than the present border in the Sumy region before Moscow can respond.

Eliminating the Rylsk salient isn’t just a matter of convenience – success will push ruscist territory 50km further from Kyiv and eliminate a potential bubble where air defense systems can threaten F-16s and Moscow can launch drones or stage its own atacks. If Moscow wants to take the region back by force, Ukraine can use Moscow’s own fortifications against it.

If Ukraine can break through Korenovo or the border west of Rylsk in the coming week, Moscow should be forced to abandon the entire sector. Ukraine would wind up with around 3,000 square kilometers of territory. At the current kilometer to casualty rate in Donbas, that would demand Putin sacrifice up to half a million soldiers to win it back.

The next logical move would be for Ukraine to outpace Moscow’s ability to pull soldiers from Donbas by launching an even bigger offensive towards Belgorod. If Ukraine can launch multiple successive operations this fall, that plus its growing ability to hit targets anywhere west of the Urals will slowly strangle Putin’s war machine.

The secret of Putin’s power is that it relies almost entirely on bluff. It’s easier for russians in or out of elite circles to just duck their head and hope the calamities his regime has wrought don’t come crashing down on them personally. The russian world’s cultural paradigm is best summed up by Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment. In effect, it assumes that everyone is some variety of psychopath who would murder anyone they pleased if not for the existence of the almighty State.

It’s a decrepit shadow of the consumerist nihilism that animates contemporary western culture, a pyramid scheme where everyone seeks to have a protector to shield them above so they can prey on people below. That’s why convicts, drunks, and rural dudes are shuffled along a conveyor belt to become fertilizer in Ukraine while posh Muscovites have wild parties.

In the coming weeks it will be absolutely essential for Free Russian formations to move into the area. Ukraine must set up an occupation regime that is visibly freer, even under martial law, than life in Putin’s nightmare. Needless to say, Ukrainian forces must exhibit maximum discipline and respect for the locals.

So far, there has been no evidence of them behaving like orcs – no looting or murders. This is will distinguish Ukrainian operations from ruscist ones for all time and generate the true source of legitimacy for Ukraine’s fight. Ukrainians aren’t just fighting for their own freedom, they’re demonstrating the only reason anyone should fight in the first place.

Thanks to the Kursk campaign, barring an unexpected disaster and reversal, Ukraine just altered geopolitical calculations across the globe. There’s not going to be any ceasefire in place or new Minsk accords. If Moscow wants its territory back, it’s got to leave Ukraine’s.

And if Moscow doesn’t, if Ukraine is forced to shed even more blood to make it happen, then the range of outcomes don’t run from Ukraine’s subjugation to a bitter peace, but endless war until both countries implode or Putin’s empire tears itself apart.

The clock is winding down on Putin’s war. He’s pushed so hard to maintain the lines in Donbas that Moscow can’t defend the rest of its territory any more. Sending ships to Cuba, threatening to give missiles to the Houthis – it’s all flailing in quicksand.

Zelensky’s recent comparison between the Kursk debacle and the similarly catastrophic loss of a submarine by the same name twenty-four years ago was apt. Bad governance will out, and in wars all bluffs are called.

Geopolitical Developments

Globally, the unraveling of the Postwar Order continues apace. As of this writing Iran, Hezbollah, and the Houthis have not yet carried out their much-anticipated retaliatory strike on Israel but are expected to do so imminently. This probably means that the attack will be big, come in waves that overwhelm Israel’s defenses, and cause casualties, likely triggering Israeli strikes across Lebanon and Iran.

Iran and Hezbollah have been keeping Israel on edge partly to maximize the psychological impact of the crisis but also to disperse their assets ahead of anticipated Israeli air strikes. Iran has allegedly obtained S-400 air defense systems and I’d be willing to bet on Putin dispatching a squadron of Su-35 jets piloted by russian “volunteers” which yes, Americans, can together do a real number on F-35s.

Israel has put the “Axis of Resistance” in a place where they have to prove they are willing to wage all-out war even if they’d really much prefer not to. Netanyahu has maneuvered himself, with the full support of the Biden-Harris administration, into a position where he will finally have an excuse to transform the fighting in Gaza into a full-on Forever War against anything Israel says is connected to Iran.

If Israel goes into Lebanon with ground troops, as appears more likely than not, it will use a lot of 155mm shells that Ukraine needs. So it’s a good thing that most of Ukraine’s shells are set to come from Europe and the countries around the world that Czechia has brought together to deliver half a million rounds before the end of the year – the bulk still on the way. It’s grimly amusing that India is likely manufacturing ammunition for Ukraine using dirt cheap russian oil, but that’s the mad world of today. It’s pure anarchy out there.

The failure of economic sanctions is one of the biggest stories of this war. As it turns out, the global economy is too big for anyone to control: everyone can try to break off their own piece, but the relentless power of markets will find a way. If you want to break the enemy’s economy, you have to destroy critical enabling infrastructure, especially transportation nodes. China’s vulnerability to attack from the sea undergirds both its Taiwan obsession as well as the alliance of convenience with Moscow, a historic enemy.

All sanctions do is add costs, which markets ultimately find a way to distribute to those least able to bear them. Moscow continues to get hold of computer chips made in countries that have enacted strict sanctions and put them in its missiles. And it will so long as nobody is paying a better price.

That’s also how you beat drug cartels, for the record: pick the least bad one, pay it a good price for product and handle all distribution to users, then watch it literally eat the competition. You then institutionalize the survivor, transforming it into a regular old pharmaceutical company.

Rational policy, unfortunately, is not particularly valued by politicians whose campaign war chests get bigger the more they act like loons. The other major geopolitical threat to Ukraine – and every other US ally – remains the serious danger of the upcoming presidential election leading to lasting dysfunction or even widespread violence.

With most members of the US press being college educated, and that correlating strongly with partisan lean, it becomes extremely challenging to get a clear picture of the real state of things during the hundred days before a presidential election. Biden stepping down at last has given the illusion of a dramatic change in the Democratic Party’s fortunes when the polling data indicates a simple reversion to the norm of the past three or four election cycles.

The selection of Walz, governor of Minnesota, as Harris’ running mate, does represent a positive sign about her campaign’s overall level of competence. He was a dark horse whose name only started showing up after he started getting press, but is pretty much exactly what you’d want in a VP pick for Harris.

American identitarians are desperate to claim that Pennsylvania governor Shapiro wasn’t picked because he’s Jewish, but that’s so ridiculous that the claim itself constitutes antisemitism. The only reason his name appeared on the Harris shortlist is that he plays well to a Northeast elitist audience. He’s an East Coast version of California’s Gavin Newsom, a plastic act spewing canned rhetoric that only sounds good to a certain kind of posh liberal.

Basically, he’s a young Biden, an orator without substance. He’s also a lawyer, like Harris, and known to be extremely ambitious, which is the last thing any presidential candidate already facing hostility from insiders who spent years happily bashing them needs. The argument that he would have been a smart choice who would secure Pennsylvania, alleged to be a must-win swing state, has little merit.

Harris will probably have to win without Pennsylvania anyway, because Trump’s polls there are structurally better than in Michigan and Wisconsin. Vice Presidents don’t bring much of an advantage in their home state anyway. The pick is all about public image, balancing the person at the top of the ticket in the narrative. They have no power and hardly matter – until they don’t, like when a president gets shot or blown up by a drone.

Vance was an utterly idiotic choice for Trump because he’s an ambitious hack who parrots whoever is punching his meal ticket this week and motivates people who don’t like Republicans to turn out. Shapiro would have been a version of that for Harris.

Kelly, the Arizona senator who was also an astronaut and combat veteran, was ideal in many ways, but he’s not from the Midwest, something Northeast types think matters because they absolutely must keep their precious Blue Wall intact. Walz is an experienced governor, but more importantly has some actual working class credentials, being a twenty-four year veteran of the Army National Guard and teacher. That’s catnip to a certain kind of Democrat and a lot of Independents, too.

Small wonder that Vance is trying to hit Walz with cheap accusations of stolen valor. The Democrats are managing to respond to this in a dumb way, having Walz say he misspoke when talking about carrying weapons in a war instead of in support of one. But Vance is barking up the wrong tree with this attack, once more proving himself unfit to be anywhere near the Oval Office.

Most service members don’t get into it with civilians, but there is a pecking order of prestige when it comes to proximity to combat. Thing is, nobody talks about it unless someone starts running their mouth and needs to be put in their place. Most often they’re someone like J.D. Vance who, while he did serve for six months in Iraq, was there to perform the same basic job that Al Gore did in Vietnam.

He was a combat photographer, a kind of journalist. And while everyone who went to play in the sandbox deserves respect, when you start parsing hairs about what being in a combat zone really means you’re asking for a smackdown from anyone who knows what’s what.

J.D. Vance is trading on his affiliation with the United States Marine Corps in a manner that disgraces the integrity of the institution. Army soldier I might have once been, but I have tremendous respect for Marine Corps culture. Honor matters to Marines, and Vance has none. Every Marine may be a rifleman first, but everyone knows that somebody whose specialty is in the combat arms faces a whole different set of dangers in their day to day life than a photographer or drone operator.

So no, Vance, you don’t get to Swift Boat a twenty-four year National Guard sergeant major and act like his service was somehow less than your own. Remember, folks, it’s usually the guys who scream stolen valor the loudest who are most guilty of it themselves.

With the Republicans running a couple twits who serve only themselves and the Democrats having managed to put together a bland but predictable ticket including a reasonably strong supporter of Ukraine, part of me almost wants to jump on the Trump will totally sell out Ukraine bandwagon. If Trump has any sense he’ll fire Vance and replace him with Nikki Haley. Otherwise he’ll certainly solidify the impression that the Vance wing will beat out any lingering Reagan Republican influence in his second term.

However, VP picks rarely have any influence on anything. And with the election almost certain to be decided by fewer than 100,000 votes spread across six states, the default scenario for 2024 is a repeat of 2020 mixed with 2000.

Polls aren’t everything, but having spent a great deal of time analyzing them over the past eight years certain patterns stand out. One is that the Democratic presidential candidate usually holds a clear national lead and even an edge in the swing states into September, but it always deteriorates as election day nears.

Republican-leaning Independents as a group tend not to pay close attention to the election until October. They tune in to see an election between a typical liberal they dislike slightly more than the conservative option for cultural reasons. If the Democrat is particularly objectionable, calling people college educated types don’t like “deplorables” or “weird” the natural tendency is to vote Red out of spite.

Democrats are largely incapable of using rhetoric that splits the opposing coalition instead of uniting it. They typically spend all October whining that a bad news cycle has surprised low-information voters among the electorate to explain why the polls generally shift 2-3 points in the Republican’s favor. Sometimes the effect isn’t strong enought to lose them the election (2008, 2012, 2020), but in 2000, 2004, and 2016, it was.

In addition, polling errors are regionally correlated. Generally speaking, the Blue Wall states of the rust belt see a Republican over-performance relative to the polls of 3-5 points. Arizona, Nevada, and other Western states tend to be 2-3 points more Democratic than the polls predict. In Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida, the polls are usually solid.

That’s why, although Harris-Walz is narrowly leading in a number of national and swing state polls, this election remains a 50/50 proposition. They’re presently running far behind where Biden-Harris and Clinton-Kaine at this stage in the cycle. Now, Biden’s late exit does slightly scramble direct year on year comparisons, however what appears to be happening is just Democrats coming home after Biden finally dropped out.

But as it stands, the next month or so looks set to be the high water mark for Harris-Walz polls. If the election were held today I expect she’d win Nevada, Arizona, and Michigan, but lose the other three and the election. Georgia and Michigan are probably the states that the upcoming election hinges on the most, with Arizona and Wisconsin next in line. Nevada is key if Harris loses either but wins the first two.

Unfortunately, the outcome is set to be close. And if it’s close both sides will probably contest the legality of the election. Each will use claims of the other side manipulating votes to justify total resistance in Congress and at the state level come 2025.

Democrats would probably go no further. Trump-Vance is all but guaranteed to try Stop The Steal 2.0, and this time Republican elected officials will know that diehard partisans won’t care about petty matters like state law or the Constitution. Their objective this time will be to cast so much doubt on the vote count in the six key swing states that the partisan Supreme Court decides to throw out these states’ slates of electors entirely. That forces a contingent election decided in Congress, with each state House delegation getting one vote for president and each Senator getting one vote for vice-president.

Republicans will almost certainly control a majority of states. Though the House could theoretically deadlock, which would mean that neither Trump nor Harris got to be president. In that scenario whoever was selected by the Senate as the Vice President would become acting President after Biden’s term expires.

Which is how you wind up with President Walz – possibly after a tie broken by Kamala Harris. Vance is despised enough in the Senate that he’d flat-out lose. Regardless, 2025 could be weird indeed.

One way or another, either the Democrats or Republicans will have to accept losing when democracy is supposedly on the line. How partisans react is an open question.

Conclusion

It certainly wasn’t a quiet week in world affairs. Amid the wrack and ruin, I think it’s fair to take some consolation in what Ukraine just achieved.

Once again the underdog delivered a brutal sucker punch to the invader. After two and a half years of this horrible war, that Putin cannot win is one of the few certainties. The question is how he loses, and the cost.

It will be fascinating to watch this week as a few thousand Ukrainian soldiers hold the shape of the future in their own hands. They are proving to the whole world how history is made: with blood, and sacrifice.