Predictions please....

[LaurenOlimina]

I'm thinking what's about to happen to rural America will cost trump some votes. Ths pandemic will be hell in the hinterlands. Small hospitals will swamp easily and there is already an epidemic in long-term care facilities. Coupled to the general lack of lock down in rural America, I predict the outcome will be horrific.

I think hunger and desperation will become acute by June or July based on the burn rate at food banks. That is also bad for Trump.

Trump will try and order people back to work. This outbreak amongst his ssupporters will be Darwinian in its effects.

Wuhan opened this week. If the rate of infection ticks back up in Wuhan, I think we are shut in until a vaccine, say 2 years at the outside.

The next relief bill will be inadequate. The Republicans are now leaning toward a "business-only" recovery plan. Democrats are the only ones fighting for direct relief. (https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/08/829662286/pelosi-and-schumer-push-to-double-size-of-interim-emergency-relief-bill)

StuartG joked Biden could sweep the electoral college. If Covid-19 is bad enough in the rural South, that might actually happen.

Imagine a hungry, angry, and surly Southern electorate who lost people in the premature return to work. If anyting were going to break the cult, this is it.

[rurallib]

1. His insane tariff wars with China didn't seem to cost him much support

among farmers. Amazing some people just can't make the connection, even when it is nearly direct, between Trump and all the bad shit that is happening.

[BComplex]

2. That won't happen in the south. They serve the kool-aid from the pulpit, fox "news" is always

running in every store & office, and all they have to say is "Obama" or "socialism" and it strikes fear into the hearts of all those who are trying to out-conservative one another. The culture of the south is conformity. Even though there are liberal southerners, if they don't conform, or try to APPEAR to conform, they are the outcasts of "proper" society. It's suffocating.

The larger cities in the south have a little more wiggle-room, and some towns & cities are down-right left-leaning. But by and large, the VAST majority demand conformity. Triply so for the rural areas. It doesn't matter how many of them lose their kids; they'd blame it on the democrats.

[LaurenOlimina]

3. I fear they will blame it on doctors and scientists.

[BComplex]

4. That would be a good guess.

They're not really into critical thinking.

[Funtatlaguy]

5. Something terrible must happen DIRECTLY to them to change them.

Examples:
A crippling illness in family bankrupts them.
A son or daughter comes out as gay and attempts suicide.