I don’t get where you guys are getting your extremely low Clinton COVID death numbers from, a Germany level response to COVID would have resulted in “only” 50,000 dead at the moment, and that’s literally best case “realistic” scenario. You’ll find articles claiming we could have prevented “90%” of deaths but I feel no matter what America would have went the France/Britain route not the Germany route.
Probably, and she would lose to Ryan or Cotton and they would run the country for 8 years.
She would be trailing all the Republican contenders by now.
Gaming it out.
Donald Trump alleges fraud and that the election is stolen. It’s a powerful narrative initially, and one that throws President Clinton into an initial crisis. Ultimately, she has to counterpunch Trump, although she may gain an unholy ally: Trump is planning to launch his own media network, so it’s not clear that Fox is necessarily going to 100% back Trump’s claims.
Hillary is a lot stronger in foreign policy; China doesn’t get into Hong Kong crackdowns because they don’t get a free hand in Xinjiang. Russia, for its part, is increasingly isolated over its attempt to hack the election. That said, the GOP continues to win at local and state elections.
North Korea becomes a bona fide crisis. The combination of nuclear weapons AND launch vehicles forces a global response. Ultimately, North Korea backs down as even China would admit that threatening nuclear attack is a step too far. Kim Jong Un dies in suspicious circumstances, replaced by his sister.
The GOP is kicking and screaming throughout the Clinton administration, although it’s important to note a large difference between Trumpist derangement and gaining a new era with the Supreme Court. The court, wary of looking like a political tool, does not flatly overrule recent cases, which comes as a bit of a dull thud for President Clinton.
President Clinton does finish off ISIS leader Al-Baghdadi; counterfactually many thousands of Syrians and Iraqis migrate to the United States. Despite dark propaganda from unhinged radio hosts, they seek to leave Jihadist ideologues behind, and the ‘risk’ doesn’t lead to any kind of bad outcome. There will be other fodder to make hay out of.
Several things that didn’t hold the headlines do: Mass shootings; decades old baggage about the Clintons and, in what might be a harbinger of future problems for the Democrats - Bernie Sanders does not go away, and he’s not necessarily on board with Hillary.
There’s nothing in the departure that does much to hurt the economy; ironically, things like the fight for fifteen are ignored or given lip service. There is some improvements, to be sure; the national debt doesn’t explode earlier, and the federal reserve has a bit higher interest rates as leverage. The economy moves towards its very low unemployment rate.
President Clinton is briefed about a strange blackout and ugly rumors of a virus in Wuhan, in late December 2019. WIth no control over congress, it is unclear that there would be money to take action earlier, although that attempt is made.
There is no way to stop Covid 19.
There is no way to stop Covid 19 from getting into New York City, and stop it from killing thousands.
Even with the whole federal stockpile and a 9-11 level of federal effort, this is absolutely a disaster. The media ungraciously attacks every last shortcoming of the effort of the pandemic. In absolute terms, the management of the pandemic is vastly better than Trump. But that scenario exists only in a few people’s nightmares–the criticism, and in the business of a pandemic, is probably valid, is that mistakes and errors caused people to die. The GOP run House of Representatives is going to find out in yet another political spectacle to ruin Hillary Clinton.
None of this does anything to save George Floyd. The Minneapolis Police Department already killed someone to great scandal. Generously, Floyd might be butterflied into a different spot, so that he doesn’t die. But multiple other suspicious deaths happened OTL as well–something like this happens.
What Hillary has here is some actual chops in supporting civil rights. Clinton’s DoJ very visibly puts Minneapolis into a consent decree, and a national address is made to console friends and family, as well as the larger community. It’s an ugly moment, but it doesn’t galvanize a movement.
The GOP has had a lot of heartburn over Donald Trump, and a lot of its rank and file are privately relieved that the SDNY has, very publicly, arrested and charged him with several offenses. Backroom conversations inside the party acknowledge the ‘near miss’ Trump had been. The Republican Primary features a few retreads: John Kaisch, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz give it another go. At the level of elections, the ‘runner up’ seems to be cliche, but John Kaisch gets the nod. He takes rival candidate Nikki Haley as his VP nominee.
The 2020 election has a disinterested youth vote, most of the media pillorying Hillary, and the economy starting to flag. This is a worse hand than Hillary had in 2016, and Kaisch wins Minnesota, Virginia, Nevada and Michigan–and of course, the election.
From protective custody in Rikers Island, Donald J. Trump hears about Kaisch’s victory, and laments that he will be an ‘Absentee President’. He is then informed federal auction of Trump Enterprises failed to bring enough funds to cover his tax obligations. A petition to President Elect Kaisch for a pardon goes unanswered. Perhaps worst of all, Melania files for divorce.
But hey, Riker’s Island is going to make the BEST LICENSE PLATES for the whole state of New York.
For months after the 2016 election, I waited for the Quantum Leap ending: that some future time traveler would put right what once went wrong. “Any day now, we’ll all wake up, and Hillary will be president, and we’ll have no memory of this nightmare,” I thought.
When this didn’t come to pass, I had a horrifying thought: what if, for some bizarre reason, President Hillary somehow turned out to be a disaster even worse than Trump? And that time traveler had to make the terrible decision to alter the past, such that Trump won the election? That somehow, if we could put up with Trump for four years, in the long run we would be better off?
Then, this year, COVID hit. And it all fell into place. As Blue Max says, there’s no way Hillary would win the 2020 election. It doesn’t matter who is president, nor does it matter how good the response might be; the president would be blamed for a poor response, if not for the pandemic itself, and the GOP would be the ones fanning the flames.
Blue Max has already described the original timeline. But what is the end result? A republican takes the White House, while both houses of Congress remained red after the 2018 midterms. In 2021, with a fresh census, the GOP ramps up their gerrymandering and other dirty tricks, making what they did in 2010 look like nothin’. Thus ushering in a new Dark Age that lasts decades.
I was always more of the opinion a Clinton presidency would have involved us getting into a massive shooting war with Russia at some point which is why Trump is the preferred timeline. Basically Clinton uncovers the vast Russian conspiracy to “steal” the election and one way or another we got ourselves into a good old fashioned shooting war.
I think it would depend on how Mitch would have handled Scalia’s SCOTUS seat and other potential vacancies. In a scenario where the liberal justices have a 6-3 majority including Merrick Garland and two younger liberal justices that replaced RBG as well as Anthony Kennedy, liberals might not be as motivated on the issue of the court. In this scenario it’s more likely Clinton would lose a low turnout election.
On the other hand, we could be looking at an 8 member court in which Scalia’s / Gorsuch’s seat was still vacant and Kennedy never retired and is still the swing justice. In that scenario liberals would be outraged and possibly even more motivated to vote.
And still have an RBG that really wants to retire.