I was an enthusiastic Cafe denizen a few years ago and, encouraged by the new tools, am inching back into the fold.  I hope to use this post for something I found the Cafe to be especially good for back in the day - gaming a future scenario - with the goal of keeping Dems prepared for whatever Republicans might throw at us. 

The scenario, as the title suggests, is Russia invading Ukraine sometime in the next few weeks.  What would it mean for the election?  How could Obama turn it to his advantage?


Why is it important to think this through?  Some background.  Over at Politico yesterday, they asked a number of politicos to "sketch out a scenario--plausible or not--in which McCain turns this around and is the next president." The answer provided by the republican lobbyist Tom Korologos is that "Russia invades Ukraine." 

Now, Korologos is deeply connected in Republican circles, and this is a strikingly specific scenario.  Korologos, oddly, doesn't elaborate, but that's because he knows that McCain has hitched his star to a hawkish anti-Russia policy, one that's seemed somewhat discordant at various times in this campaign. 

McCain's clearly been gunning for the title of prophet on Ukraine, sometimes at the cost of looking Ahab-like on the topic.  In the first debate, McCain said

And watch Ukraine. This whole thing has got a lot to do with Ukraine, Crimea, the base of the Russian fleet in Sevastopol. And the breakdown of the political process in Ukraine between Tymoshenko and Yushchenko is a very serious problem. So watch Ukraine, and let's make sure that we -- that the Ukrainians understand that we are their friend and ally.

In the second, he repeated this

I said before, watch Ukraine. Ukraine, right now, is in the sights of Vladimir Putin, those that want to reassemble the old Soviet Union.

The right-wing press has similarly advanced this notion, as in Jefferey Kuhner Washington Times column this week, "Will Russia-Ukraine be Europe's next war?", where he wrote

Russia has been distributing thousands of Russian passports to supporters in the Crimea. The plan is to replicate what was done in South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Create a pretext to send in Russian "peacekeepers" to protect supposedly endangered Russian "citizens."

Palin's Putin-rearing-his-head could take on a very different cast very quickly, and McCain, as we all know, has lots of back channel Davis-Manafort links to the region. 

So, thoughts? How does Obama own this scenario if it comes to pass, rather than cede it to McCain?