Two real victories for democracy

It is fitting that the unexpected U.S. midterm election results emerged just as Russia formally announced its military withdrawal from the key Ukrainian city of Kherson.

Chalk the two events up as key victories in the global battle for democracy and against authoritarianism, which are being fought on very different playing fields — one at the ballot box and one on the battlefield.

The Ukrainian victory offers an important lesson for the ongoing U.S. struggle to mend our broken democracy — even though many Americans might never imagine the connection. However, a couple of hours spent on Wednesday with Roman Horodenskyi, a badly wounded Ukrainian soldier visiting Philadelphia for treatment, made the link very clear.

Although many Americans of all political persuasions see our democracy as threatened, few call it the nation’s most pressing problem, according to a New York Times/siena College poll conducted in October.

That is understandable at a time when high prices are on people’s mind. Democracy can be an amorphous concept. Having never experienced authoritarian rule, many Americans can’t imagine it, except as a Trump-produced label to slur their opponents. (And those who recognize the danger sometimes despair at how to combat it.)

Thus, right-wing pundits mocked President Joe Biden when he insisted, shortly before the midterms, that “democracy is on the ballot.” Biden was absolutely correct.

Nevertheless, pre-election polls showed that 71% of Republicans were willing to vote for candidates who said the 2020 election was stolen (compared with just 12% of Democrats and 37% of independents). More than 370 GOP midterm candidates for the U.S. House and Senate, and state offices, were election deniers, according to a New York Times study.

Driven by Trump’s Big Lie — election deniers gnaw away like termites at the very foundation of U.S. democracy: the expectation that the losing candidate will concede after a fair election. The deniers also foment violence.

So the good news for U.S. democracy is this: The MAGA GOP red wave did not materialize, nor the violence. Several election-denying candidates for secretaries of state, who would have twisted state voting rules, were defeated. Several outrageous GOP crazies promoted by Trump, such as Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, were defeated.

But America’s democracy battle is far from over. At least 200 election deniers won national and state contests. The House of Representatives will most likely have a narrow GOP majority, with a hardright MAGA bloc playing a key role. And, although badly politically wounded by these midterms, Trump still has a grip on the GOP base.

Which brings me to Ukraine, and Horodenskyi, a 22-year-old who endured things none of us would even like to imagine to prevent Russia from taking over his country. In Ukraine, when you fight for democracy, the risk is staggering, but the enemy is clear.

Horodenskyi was brought to Philadelphia to be fitted with prosthetics by Revived Soldiers Ukraine, a U.s.-based humanitarian organization that helps wounded soldiers receive treatment at home and in the U.S.A.

This special forces machine gunner, wearing a baseball cap, a black prosthetic right arm and hand, and black sport pants over a metal leg, still sports an occasional grin, but his story reflects what Ukrainian soldiers still confront, and why they keep fighting.

Beginning in January, he was based with the 36th Marine Brigade in Mariupol inside the huge Illich Iron & Steel Works. The marines were tasked with holding off the Russians from Mariupol as long as possible to give other parts of the Ukrainian army time to train against the overwhelming numbers of Russian forces. “Nobody gave a thought to whether we could get out again,” he told me.

But there was no food, water had to be taken from ancient drain pipes, and the Russians “threw everything at us, phosphorus, vacuum bombs, and 3-ton bombs from sea, air, and ground.” On April 4, a bomb landed 15 feet from him, sheering off his left leg and causing seven open fractures in his right arm. Eight days later, he was taken hostage along with other comrades by the Russians and transported to a local Russian-controlled hospital with Russian doctors in occupied Donetsk, where, after his arm was amputated, he was given “no painkillers, no IV, and no meds.”

Horodenskyi did not want to talk about the torture he endured while hospitalized.

“The Russians would say, ‘Soon we will take everything from you,’” Roman recalled. He survived only because, near death from sepsis, he was freed in a prisoner exchange in early May.

Why am I telling you Roman’s story? Because I asked what he wanted to do when he returned home, and he instantly replied: “If they will accept me, I will go back to the army. Not because of money, but because the main point is for our country to be free, and for the future of our kids.”

For this young man, there is no choice but to defend democracy. The Kherson victory is a major military breakthrough, but the war is far from over.

In the United States, the choice is much less stark, and the would-be authoritarians come from within our own society. But the midterms seem to have demonstrated that there is limited voter tolerance for extremist, Trumpist candidates.

For further inspiration, we Americans need only look to Ukraine to remind us how lucky we are not to have to lay down our lives in a fight against authoritarians — and how urgent is the need to prevent that from ever becoming the case.