Several Republican-leaning Southern states are slowly reopening.  Meanwhile, Democrat-run Northern and Midwestern states plan to keep their citizens locked down, even as their state economies collapse.  While the Democrats ought to be watching the Southern experiment with curiosity, hoping it works so they can follow suit, that's not what's happening.  Instead, with a venom the Democrats last displayed in 1861, they're actively rooting for mass die-offs in the Southern states and among other Trump-supporters.

Just a few days ago, Georgia governor Brian Kemp made headlines for his plan to get his state back to business:

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Monday, April 20 rolled out aggressive plans to reopen the state's economy, saying many businesses shuttered to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus may reopen their doors as early as Friday, April 24.

[snip]

Kemp brought up the struggles of contract workers, small businesses and Georgia farmers, saying that he "hears the concerns of those I am honored to serve" and that the state has been seeing

The governor mentioned that one of the major focuses to meet requirements of President's Donald Trump's guidelines would be testing. In order to do so, the state would be partnering with the Georgia Health system to "double down" on testing capacity.

It sounds like a reasonable and humane plan.  Also, in light of Sweden's experiment with going about its ordinary business showing a fair degree of success, it makes sense to move away from the disastrous lockdown approach.

But that's not how the Democrats in the North see things.  Dana Milbank, one of the more toxic (and foolish) writers at the Washington Post, authored an opinion piece entitled "Georgia leads the race to become America's No. 1 Death Destination":

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is proposing to offer a new nonstop service to the Great Beyond: He has a bold plan to turn his state into the place to die.

[snip]

Public health experts fear coronavirus will burn through Georgia like nothing has since William Tecumseh Sherman. But Kemp is making a big gamble that his constituents wouldn't want to swap places with anyone, and that tourists will be dying to get to Georgia in any class of travel — economy, economy plus or intensive care — as the Peachtree State remakes itself as the Petri State.

When gyms and fitness centers reopen, residents of Georgia will have a whole new range of exercise classes to help them flatten the curve, including the total-body workout CrossImmunity and a new aerobics-and-flexibility boot camp called SuperSpreader.

Cute(ish) puns don't hide the malevolent nastiness powering Milbank's writing.

What makes Milbank's article especially toxic is something Don Surber has pointed out, which is that Democrats are having a different experience with the Wuhan virus from Republicans', which makes different approaches reasonable.  Surber looked at the data for Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi, the six Southern states planning to reopen, and compared their numbers to what's going on in the North:

There have been 2,351 COVID-19 deaths in those 6 states, whose combined population is 51,956,382.

There have been 21,716 COVID-19 deaths in New York and New Jersey, population 28,335,751.

Deaths per 1 million people are 1,004 in New York, 535 in New Jersey, 137 nationally, 79 in Georgia, 61 in Mississippi, 42 in Florida, 39 in Alabama, 27 in South Carolina, and 24 in Tennessee.

Looks like the SEC is doing fine (except for Louisiana).

The Big East is shell-shocked.

COVID-19 is nowhere near the problem in those 6 states as it is in New York and New Jersey.

Surber even found the perfect tweet to sum up the point about the regions' different needs:

Next time a Cat 5 hurricane threatens Miami, I fully expect New York City to evacuate.

— Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii) April 22, 2020

This Democrats' ferocious hatred isn't limited just to the South.  It extends to any person or place supporting Trump.  In Maryland, Len Foxwell, the chief of staff for a Democrat state comptroller, read an NPR article about a "patriot movement" that wants to defy Idaho's "stay at home" orders.  He then fantasized on Facebook that Trump-supporters should be herded into a compound and left to die:

Meanwhile, at Politico, Christopher Cadelago was dreaming of a major die-off of elderly people to block Trump's re-election:

Mass casualties from the coronavirus could upend the political landscape in battleground states and shift contests away from President Donald Trump, according to a new analysis.

Academic researchers writing in a little-noticed public administration journal — Administrative Theory & Praxis — conclude that when considering nothing other than the tens of thousands of deaths projected from the virus, demographic shifts alone could be enough to swing crucial states to Joe Biden in the fall.

Those are the macabre fantasies of mentally unhealthy people — and it's the modern Democrat party.  Significant numbers of them in prominent positions hate you and want you to die.  In 1968, that was the view of a small, although violent, Democrat-socialist minority.  What we're seeing today is closer to 1861, when all Democrats felt the same way.