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Everything has changed. Russian President Vladimir Putin didn't just want two regions in eastern Ukraine after all. And he doesnt just want Ukraine. Putin wants to dismantle the rules-based, post-World War II international order that delivered an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity to Europe.

Whatever Joe Biden signed up for as a candidate, then nominee, and finally U.S. president, is gone. That battle to restore the soul of America, the plans to dramatically alter the social safety net, that is over. With little remaining political capital, Biden must still work to contain a pandemic and manage the economy, but he has a different job now, with challenges that neither he nor his party envisioned or preferred.

Stabilizing democracy at home and abroad, using his time and energy to combat indifference to threats to freedom among Americans, while countering authoritarian forces overseas this is the best use of the presidential bully pulpit and Bidens best hope for a legacy.

Its time to put the bickering over Build Back Better behind him. Let Sen. Bernie Sanders bark into the wind. Joe Biden can expect the remainder of his presidency to be full of inflation, international crises, and when Republicans will likely control the House of Representatives next winter, impeachment. There is nothing bright on the horizon, which means Biden has little left to risk or lose.

At 82, he will be too old for a second term in the Oval Office, and his exit will unleash an even more volatile period in our politics. There are likely to be open contests in both parties, probably dominated by the craziness of Donald Trump running again, and in the Democratic Party the bitter division between progressive and moderates.

The time to treat both the threats to the constitutional order at home and the liberal order around the world as an emergency is now. Not next year after the midterm elections, or the following year when Biden will most likely be serving his final months. The leader of the free world must treat these threats to the free world as paramount, above all other concerns. He must affirm that in America, and around the world, people must support a system of rules that does not accept an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation, or a sustained attempt to overturn a free and fair election.

At a summit on democracy he hosted in December, Biden said: The choices we make at this moment are going to fundamentally determine the direction our world is going to take in the coming decades. Those words were true then. Thanks to Vladimir Putin, they are even truer now.

A continued threat from Russia may consume the rest of Bidens term, and require him to hold the alliance together not only to counter Putins ambition, but to confront the fallout of what Russias actions do to embolden China in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

To begin, Biden must keep talking to war-weary Americans throughout this crisis about Russias intentions and the threats they pose to the world and to us. He found the right words last week to warn of the cost our country will absorb while fighting for freedom elsewhere.

I will do everything in my power to limit the pain the American people are feeling at the gas pump. This is critical to me, Biden said. But this aggression cannot go unanswered. If it did, the consequences for America would be much worse. America stands up to bullies. We stand up for freedom. This is who we are.

Biden must stand up to the bullies in the Republican party not to defend his own actions against their attacks on his weakness, but to call out their lies that strengthen Putins hand. Before the Kremlins land grab had officially begun, Putin scored a victory when Trump offered high praise that was echoed by the man who served as Trumps secretary of state. Both backtracked slightly in their CPAC remarks as the world turned against Putin in solidarity with Ukraine, but the damage was done.

Trump first used the word genius to describe Putins invasion. His longer description of Putins prowess was pure, Russian state television propaganda. Heres a guy that says, you know, Im going to declare a big portion of Ukraine independent he used the word independent and were going to go out and were going to go in and were going to help keep peace, Trump said. You got to say, thats pretty savvy.

Savvy isnt as shocking as peace and independent.

Mike Pompeo West Point graduate, congressman, CIA director and secretary of state initially flattered Putin as very shrewd, very capable, and said he has enormous respect for him.

All of this, of course, has been echoed by influential right-wing voices. Media stars and Trumpkin celebrities have also praised Putin for his strength, or have chosen to sneer at and mock any criticism of him. The statements from Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk, Roger Stone, and Michael Flynn have incorporated Russian talking points laying blame for Putins invasion with NATO and America.

Biden cannot reverse the rot in our political landscape. But he can seek to educate, energize, and unite Americans around the preservation of liberty and democracy. He can start with the left of his party, where some fringe populist, isolationist, and protectionist voices hold sway. And Biden should warn the our own backyard crowds in both parties of the costs of ignoring our leadership role on the world stage.

Biden could also explain to his own voters that their party is likely to lose power quite soon, perhaps for a long time. Democrats have failed to reckon with the coming threat of being in the wilderness. They do not tell their voters that by abandoning rural America and prioritizing urban America, they have bolstered the structural advantages the GOP enjoys in the electoral college and the U.S. Senate. Biden, perhaps because he served a small state for so long in the Senate, does not tell them this.

With the inexorable erosion of ticket-splitting, there will soon be no more Joe Manchins in West Virginia and Jon Testers in Montana. Red states will have red senators.

If Biden and his party are passive in the face of these perversions of democracy, Americans will remain detached. If he doesnt champion the sovereignty of free people around the world, Americans will remain detached. He may not succeed, but Biden himself said we must meet this moment with the knowledge it will determine the course of the world for the foreseeable future.

In the contest between democracy and autocracy, between sovereignty and subjugation, Biden said last week, freedom will prevail.

We dont know that it will. But if an American president, at this dark hour, doesnt fight like hell to preserve freedom, it simply cannot prevail.

A.B. Stoddard is associate editor of RealClearPolitics and a columnist.

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Biden Should Spend Next Three Years Focused on Democracy - RealClearPolitics