I think recent testimony to the Impeachment Inquiry Committee gives us some insight into just what Trump and Giuliani were trying to do in Ukraine. Their connections with Ukrainian and Kremlin politics and Oligarchs, plus their business ties through Manafort, Putin, Gen Flynn and Rudy’s “associates” Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, just made it all possible.

If the Ukrainian authorities had publicly announced (as Trump tried to make happen) that they were investigating the Bidens in a corruption probe, Biden’s candidacy would have been finished. The fact that nothing would ever come of that investigation was irrelevant, the seed would be planted in the public’s mind. Even if the investigation itself never got started, the announcement’s effect on the Bidens would be immediate and devastating. There would be no way to get that toothpaste back in the tube. And of course, Biden would have no way to confront his accusers, cross-examine witnesses, present exculpatory evidence; in other words, all the legal protections the Trumpster seems to believe only he and his sleazebag Vegas houseboy goodfella accomplices, are entitled to.

Its ironic, isn’t it? The Ukrainian affair may torpedo the Trump Presidency, and even if the Bidens were international criminal masterminds, he isn’t even the leading Democratic challenger any more, is he? Warren, Sanders and other candidates far to the Left of Biden are now serious contenders for the nomination. Trump may go down in history as the man who made a Socialist America not only possible, or even inevitable, but absolutely necessary.