Ominous

Greg Sargent at the Washington Post published an interesting piece yesterday (link here) with the dramatic title of "Coronavirus is invading Red America, new data show. That’s ominous for Trump."

The President's support has remained steady this year in his stronghold of red states, where spread of the coronavirus has been delayed — until now. That's because the virus is now moving into whiter, more GOP-dominant areas of the country.

Those areas previously were resistant to social distancing and stay-at-home orders and supported Trump's push to reopen the country early. Now they're beginning to see firsthand how foolish that position is and that potentially will weaken their support for Trump.

The President has tried to portray reactions to coronavirus as "us versus them," where white America is being tainted by browner America. But that myth is about to exploded and that will hurt him.

"More people are going to understand that they need to be protected from this virus — that they are not shielded from it, that they are not in another part of America," notes a prominent demographer quoted in the article. "As soon as they understand this more, they’ll become more dissatisfied with Trump’s view of trying to open up America. This is ominous for him."

Then, perhaps, they finally will start to understand why Trump is not a solution to this problem but more of the cause.