I think there you are assuming that the MAGAs would draw the same conclusions about why Trump lost as you would. They may not.

Remember when McCain lost to Obama and the Republicans went through a moment of self-reflection, saying that maybe they should focus on becoming a more diverse, moderate, Hispanic-friendly party of family values and hard work? That lasted for about 5 minutes, until the Tea Party showed up and convinced the Republicans that McCain lost because he was too honourable and not conservative enough. Then they doubled down on plutocracy and racism.

Trump himself might be dropped as a washed-out has-been, but I don't think the far right is going to be shamed out of existence for long. People like Mitch McConnell find them too useful.

Without those clowns there's nobody to betray for the billionaires who pay the salaries of the professional Republicans, and all of said professionals would have to go get real jobs. So no, there will be no breaking with the reactionaries.

That said, it's amusing to watch Trump try to say it's ok to vote by mail in Florida now; though voting by mail is evil and he's sabotaging the USPS to make sure those votes can't be counted anyway. Ah, well; maybe someone explained that the only ex-felons who will be unable to vote come November will be white ones living in the northern end of the state, almost all of whom are Republicans. So he really, really needs the seniors he's actively trying to kill to vote for him; but they will only do so by mail.

I wonder at what point the corporate donor class will conclude that the Republicans' gross incompetence is worse for business than the Democrats' supposed socialism, and switch to buying off the Democratic Party?

Don't they hedge their bets and buy both anyway?

Some do, but most want the biggest bang for the buck and back the party that is best for them. What with wingnut welfare and all, that's generally the Republicans; it's all but impossible to find something you can't pay them to do, while the Democrats as a group have standards. Which was the basically the point of the 60s politically, when the Democrats broke with the KKK and the Republicans leapt right into bed with them.

The thing I am trying to wrap my mind around is exactly WHO still thinks that ignoring the pandemic will make the economy recover faster. The ideological MAGAs, sure, they support anything that alarms liberals even if it hurts themselves. But the corporates? Yeah they're weaselly things to avoid getting sued by sick employees, but surely they understand that their profits will stay in the toilet the longer this pandemic drags on. Right? Unless they're somehow still able to make money despite the economy being in freefall.

From the corporate side, there is a cost of having a business that is present even if the business is not open. They still have to pay fixed costs such as rent/taxes/insurance/etc... Closing may allow them to reduce their variable costs supplies/labor/utilities/ext... very low, but they still have to have money to cover the fixed costs. Strong companies usually have cash reserves or access to reasonable credit they can use to cover those fixed costs for some period of time, but many companies are already in debt, which may affect their access to more credit. If companies are burning through their reserves or line of credit, then they have to decide if they can be profitable in the current business conditions, or even just produce enough cash flow to lose money at a slower rate and buy more time for the economy to come back. With the uncertainty of the timeframe there are a lot of businesses that are having to figure out how to make money in the poor economy, or they won’t last until the recovery.

Of course, a lot of major corporations have been handed big piles of cash by the Republicans running the various disaster relief programs; and so they've been rather profitable. It's a strong part of why the stock market isn't down a lot farther. That, very low bond yields, and the rush to trash; but number one is getting cut off now and number three is just another bubble/Ponzi scheme waiting to collapse. It might get even more interesting soon.

I definitely wouldn’t be surprised if it got worse. How long the government is willing/able to prop up businesses, and how they choose which businesses to save is definitely the wild card here. The inability of the US to get the virus under control combined with the unwillingness of the two parties to come up with a true compromise plan for further stimulus could make the day of reckoning come a lot more quickly for a lot of companies and individuals, and once the dominoes start to fall, it will be hard to escape the impact.

Which begs the question, who exactly is the constituency for the push to reopen the economy with the virus still out of control? Even the shortsighted suits have got to have realised that this is counterproductive by now. They know the government won't prop them up forever. Why aren't they leaning on the GOP to get their (poop) together and stop faffing about with this "masks violate my rights!" nonsense? Are they delusional enough to think that "let her rip and who cares if our employees drop like flies" is a viable economic strategy? Who exactly is going to be buying their products and services in a pandemic? The.American Chamber of Commerce is many things but it is not stupid.

The Chamber of Commerce is a fairly stupid crowd, actually; dangle a short term profit in front of them and they tend to forget that there's another quarter coming. That said, the constituency for what Trump's doing is the folks playing the market (or rather, gaming it); they're doing fairly well and aren't worried about next week. When next week comes? They'll just game it differently.

Remember, the GOP exists to pander to a plutocratic edge case constituency (the racist morons in the cheap seats are merely the only means to that end left); for decades they've been doing well as the US decays, and Trump's just more of the same to them.

Suicidally stupid, though? Must be nice to live knowing that if the world went to hell next week you'd be fine because you already made a billion dollars this week.

If you've got your pile, your gated community, and your second home in a better run country then you don't really care about the long term at all.

But that aside, it looks like Trump thinks attacking Social Security and Medicare are political winners, and that making the Republicans own the upcoming depression won't be a problem. Though Moscow Mitch giving the endangered senators permission to distance themselves from Trump is not making his day at all.

It looks like Trump and his stooges are making their play to destroy the USPS too early: and so they're giving the Democrats an easy and compelling issue to run on that will even appeal to a lot of Trump's base, while giving voters lots of time to do an end run around the sabotage to vote anyway. Well, it's not like Trump's every been credibly accused of competence at anything but identity fraud.

I think they'll have screwed with in-person voting plenty as well, so don't get complacent or anything.

Trump has just endorsed Q-Anon - he's said he's absolutely fine with receiving the support of a bunch of delusional nutters and taking credit for defeating a Satanic cabal of pedophile-cannibals. If ISIS said nice things about him, he'd endorse them too.