As I watched the towers fall on 9/11 I had no concerns about my personal safety. It was obvious to me that Al Qaeda was never going to have the capability to strike like that again. Those sorts of attacks rely on complete surprise.
I was deeply concerned about what bad actors would do to corrupt the system and was sure we were going to get into disastrous wars.
With this, again I'm not concerned about my personal safety. I am concerned about some friends and family who do fall into the high risk population, but my biggest concern is about bad actors again. When people are scared and looking for leadership, they often flock to authority figures that tell them what they want to hear.
In 2001 GW Bush and his people instinctively knew how to do the right swagger to get people on board and his approval peaked at 90%. Trump always shoots himself in the foot and even though his approval has gone up in the last week or so, on the Five Thirty Eight average it's been about 2 points
How Popular Is Donald Trump?
I am very concerned that Trump will manage to get away with this or in his incompetence he will do severe damage to the country, but he has a minefield of problems ahead of him. The Democrats get that this is the time for bottom up stimulus if there ever was a time. Even the best arguments for trickle down economics only work if the normal consumer economy is operating. But McConnell wants to make the rich richer and let the poor die of starvation.
Trump has the most conservative Christian groups in his corner like never before. Those who believe the Book of Revelation are seeing it play out right now. The largest populations hit by COVID-19 right now are in the blue states where these beliefs are not common. As long as it's "heathens" dying, they are, in some cases, actually happy. The virus outbreak is still minor in Appalachia and the Deep South where these beliefs are most common.
There is a possibility that the virus doesn't have a major outbreak in this part of the country, but I think it's highly likely. Trump and his economic people want to open things back up ASAP. There was an article my SO found yesterday that Trump personally is losing 1/2 million a day on just a handful of properties and he has all those properties heavily mortgaged. If Trump tries to open things up, the blue state governors will ignore him and do what they feel is best to control this, but many red states will try to go back to business as usual.
Some percentage of those kids who flocked to Florida for spring break last week got infected and now went back home and a many of those are going back to red states. The European travel ban fiasco also crammed thousands of people together in airports in a big rush to get home and some of those people were headed for red states.
The odds it's taking root in red states now are very, very high. As of a few days ago at least 40% of Trump's supporters still believed COVID-19 was a hoax and were refusing to comply with any of the recommendations to avoid contact with others. Many red states have higher obesity rates and higher tobacco use than blue states. Thanks to adopting the Medicare expansion in blue states and not in red states the medical systems in blue states tend to be more stable.
If it starts expanding in red states like it has in New York City, it will be much harder to contain. With a population initially disinclined to believe it, fewer medical resources, and a larger at rick population, it could get very grim.
That would likely sink Trump politically. Though it appears Trump is using the strategic medical supply reserve politically. The initial states hit by COVID-19 were screaming for extra resources and not getting them, but when it started growing in Florida Trump released the first ventilators from the reserve, all to Florida. Washington, Oregon, California, and New York still haven't gotten any.
The anti-Trump ads haven't really started running yet. Bill Kristol has the Defending Democracy Together PAC that has released some anti-Trump ads. The Lincoln Project with Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson, and Kelly Ann Conway's husband are producing ads, and then Michael Bloomberg has promised to pour a fortune into ads and I would not be surprised to see Tom Steyer going after Trump too.
Bill Kristol is trying to recruit a third party candidate to run to Trump's right. I suspect Joe Walsh is going to do it.
Bill Kristol and The Lincoln Project especially know exactly what kind of spin works on Republican voters. They will be punching those buttons hard to convince would be Republican voters that Trump is not their guy.
We still have a long ways to go until the election. My logic says Trump's chances of re-election are slim, but my limbic system has yet to get the message.
Wasn't certain to put this in the Coronavirus thread or this one, but as it mostly pokes at the terrible response this administration has done, I put it here.
I've seen some of that guy's other videos. He takes a humorous poke at all things legal. And we need humor right now.
