Hilary in 2016: how does COVID go?

[Bolt451]

Let's say Hilary narrowly wins in 2016. With republicans making gains in 2018. How do you think she does compared to the Donald when it comes to covid ?

Do you think this is enough for Her to win a second term? (Assuming she runs again) won would assume she's up against Trump again


(Also not the point but I'd imagine there's only six people on the supreme court by now!)

 

[Jackson Lennock]

Probably not all that differently, given that Trump was hardly the guy running things on COVID. Fauci would still be there either way. If you put aside Trump's blustering and TV optics, the under-the-hood technical stuff was dealt with by experts and stuff of the same kind as HRC had. Maybe there would have been more/better international coordination if HRC was President and not Trump.

Some major differences in the US's health outcomes and other western nations' was probably because of Americans' habits: diet/obesity, lack of social distancing, etc. Clinton won't be able to change that.

A lot of the paranoia during COVID also came from how public health officials weren't exactly straightforward about how they were operating from a position of considerable uncertainty. When public pronouncements changed as new info came to light, public health officials were less than candid about how this was the case. In practice, they made decent calls given the chaos, but trust is fragile and the whole point of being an expert is you have to work through trust because the public literally can't understand fully what you're doing (otherwise, they wouldn't need an expert).

Clinton would have to deal with a GOP Supermajority Senate. Democratic Administration (10 years of Democrats) + a very very very bad map for Democrats = 2018 Senate bloodbath. Ironically, the stimulus stuff might be much damper than happened with the Pelosi-controlled House.


Republicans would have confirmed Garland in the lame duck before Clinton had the chance to put up somebody to his left. They'd also have used the confirmation to delay hearings on Clinton's other nominees. My guess is they'd have negotiated with Clinton on any other nominees afterwards. Also, Kennedy wasn't going to retire under Hillary Clinton. Ginsburg and maybe Breyer might have retired before the midterm bloodbath though.

 

[Excelsior]

I've always figured that a Clinton presidency in which COVID arrives on schedule is basically the ultimate nightmare scenario for the United States. It is one of the small set of terrible yet plausible circumstances that could lead to true dystopia. Republican governors (and there would be a lot of them) would be much worse on COVID, even as bad as they already were, because of their opposition to socialist federal nazi Clinton oppression. Even the mildest measures they took in OTL would probably be thrown out as most of them would follow the DeSantis playbook. Many of them would also be actively running for the presidential nomination in 2020 or posturing to be the running mate. Ironically, DeSantis himself would probably not be governor.

Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans would be in the middle of the Clinton impeachment when the pandemic hit in a coincidental parallel of OTL and wrap the thing up a few votes short of conviction before firing up the machine again over pandemic tyranny. They would be slow pass any form of aid, and I suspect it would be restricted to business-oriented measures rather than getting money directly to people. Trump sweeps Clinton in 2020, possibly even winning the popular vote.

 

[Jackson Lennock]

I've always figured that a Clinton presidency in which COVID arrives on schedule is basically the ultimate nightmare scenario for the United States. It is one of the small set of terrible yet plausible circumstances that could lead to true dystopia. Republican governors (and there would be a lot of them) would be much worse on COVID, even as bad as they already were, because of their opposition to socialist federal nazi Clinton oppression. Even the mildest measures they took in OTL would probably be thrown out as most of them would follow the DeSantis playbook. Many of them would also be actively running for the presidential nomination in 2020 or posturing to be the running mate. Ironically, DeSantis himself would probably not be governor.

Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans would be in the middle of the Clinton impeachment when the pandemic hit in a coincidental parallel of OTL and wrap the thing up a few votes short of conviction before firing up the machine again over pandemic tyranny. They would be slow pass any form of aid, and I suspect it would be restricted to business-oriented measures rather than getting money directly to people. Trump sweeps Clinton in 2020, possibly even winning the popular vote.

DeSantis facilitated vaccination distribution and focused efforts on protecting the immunocompromised (mainly the elderly). Despite having a disproportionate number of groups in the state with high comorbidities (the elderly, migrant workers residing in very close spaces, etc.) and a lot of people going in and out of the state, the state's COVID outcomes were basically middle of the pack in the country.

Covid’s deadly tradeoffs, by the numbers: How each state has fared in the pandemic

POLITICO’s State Pandemic Scorecard shows how state decisions impacted lives, jobs, education and well-being.

www.politico.com

 

[Lord Caedus]

Clinton would probably lose in 2020, even if she handled COVID well or even mildly competently.

By TTL 2020, Democrats will have held the White House for three terms and Clinton probably would have been facing unrelenting GOP opposition that would have made her legislative agenda effectively DOA (even if the changed presidential race allows the Senate to flip in 2016, the House will almost certainly going to remain Republican).

Even butterflying COVID away, she'd likely have few accomplishments, an incredibly-energized opposition and the Democratic party apparatus having been hollowed out after years of neglect from Obama (and likely Clinton) and three consecutive midterms delivering absolutely brutal results against the party in Congress and for state offices.

Also, Trump in all likelihood is not the nominee in a scenario where Clinton wins in 2016.

If he loses in 2016, all of the "never Trump" Republicans, or even those like Paul Ryan & Mitch McConnell who IOTL were obviously hedging their bets until the election results came in, would have been validated in his inability to win a general election. Without the aura of being a winner (a product of decades of self-promotion, The Apprentice, bodying more established candidates in the GOP primary and upsetting Clinton IOTL 2016), Trump doesn't gain the ability or prestige within his party to reshape the GOP to his will.

What happens to Trump? Probably what it's rumored he was planning to do if he had lost in 2016--use the attention and support he gained from the campaign as a jumping board for a TV network (Jared Kushner met with potential investors to discuss the idea in October 2016 IOTL) and continue claiming the 2016 election was stolen from him to get more attention/dollars.

Who is the Republican nominee? I'm not sure. The GOP's habit of nominating the primary runner up in the next election cycle would mean it would be Ted Cruz, but Trump's clowning of all the 2016 candidates would seemingly eliminate the possibility for any of them to run again in a party like the Republicans, whose base voters clearly want a strongman-type who can bully others into submission as their leader.

Probably not all that differently, given that Trump was hardly the guy running things on COVID. Fauci would still be there either way. If you put aside Trump's blustering and TV optics, the under-the-hood technical stuff was dealt with by experts and stuff of the same kind as HRC had. Maybe there would have been more/better international coordination if HRC was President and not Trump.

COVID is one of the many things that could be significantly affected by an HRC victory. Trump eliminated a pandemic response group within the National Security Council in 2018 and slashed the number of CDC personnel operating in Beijing by a third; there's really no way to be certain, but it's likely that with more outside observers looking for signs of a pandemic, Beijing would not be able to hide or downplay COVID as much as they did IOTL 2019.

Also likely is that there would be a lot more institutional memory at the highest levels, with Obama administration personnel who had been through the Ebola outbreak likely still around in an HRC administration. At any rate, the point person leading an COVID taskforce in a TL where it happens on schedule during a Hillary Clinton administration would certainly not be a guy whose last job was breeding Labradoodles.

Republicans would have confirmed Garland in the lame duck before Clinton had the chance to put up somebody to his left. They'd also have used the confirmation to delay hearings on Clinton's other nominees. My guess is they'd have negotiated with Clinton on any other nominees afterwards. Also, Kennedy wasn't going to retire under Hillary Clinton. Ginsburg and maybe Breyer might have retired before the midterm bloodbath though.

Ginsburg reportedly wanted to have Clinton appoint her replacement, so she probably would retire early in Hillary's term, especially if Garland is confirmed in the lame-duck session before Obama leaves office.

Without the negative example of Ginsburg IOTL not leaving while Obama could appoint her replacement, I'd bet Breyer doesn't decide to retire before Hillary's term.

 

[OHC]

There is one thing that I think gets memory holed in Clinton 2016 conversations, and that's that the Republicans controlled so many state legislatures that one or two more they'd be able to call an Article V convention. There were plans to do it, too, with the goal of passing a balanced budget amendment. Since 2018 ITTL would be probably another Republican year they would probably be able to go ahead with it.

A constitutional convention would fuck the political scene up - it's not entirely clear in the jurisprudence whether it would be confined to the proposed amendment for which it was called or if it would just "open the constitution" and allow for any kind of changes or the writing of an entirely new document.

Anyway - there is a good chance that the 2020 America facing covid ITTL has a completely unrecognizable political scene going on.

 

[Charles EP M.]

The big three factors here are:

- The US has the same people in power at the CDC like Jackson said, it won't have much difference in terms of PPE or pre-existing health etc - Clinton has all the same advantages and disadvantages going in

- Trump was terrible and an idiot and did things like seize material the states needed, while Clinton is not - on its own, this would be good, tens of thousands more would live

- As Excelsior says, enough of the red state governors and state governments will oppose her on grounds of But That's Socialism that it will probably be harder to help these states, outside of any large Dem-voting cities - you'll get more deaths in the red states but also a lot more radicalised Republicans there

The last part is the biggest problem. In many countries, the opposition parties dialled it back on covid because they only want to rock the boat and not cut a hole in the bottom. The US won't get that.

 

[Jackson Lennock]

Clinton would probably lose in 2020, even if she handled COVID well or even mildly competently.

By TTL 2020, Democrats will have held the White House for three terms and Clinton probably would have been facing unrelenting GOP opposition that would have made her legislative agenda effectively DOA (even if the changed presidential race allows the Senate to flip in 2016, the House will almost certainly going to remain Republican).

Even butterflying COVID away, she'd likely have few accomplishments, an incredibly-energized opposition and the Democratic party apparatus having been hollowed out after years of neglect from Obama (and likely Clinton) and three consecutive midterms delivering absolutely brutal results against the party in Congress and for state offices.

Also, Trump in all likelihood is not the nominee in a scenario where Clinton wins in 2016.

If he loses in 2016, all of the "never Trump" Republicans, or even those like Paul Ryan & Mitch McConnell who IOTL were obviously hedging their bets until the election results came in, would have been validated in his inability to win a general election. Without the aura of being a winner (a product of decades of self-promotion, The Apprentice, bodying more established candidates in the GOP primary and upsetting Clinton IOTL 2016), Trump doesn't gain the ability or prestige within his party to reshape the GOP to his will.

What happens to Trump? Probably what it's rumored he was planning to do if he had lost in 2016--use the attention and support he gained from the campaign as a jumping board for a TV network (Jared Kushner met with potential investors to discuss the idea in October 2016 IOTL) and continue claiming the 2016 election was stolen from him to get more attention/dollars.

Who is the Republican nominee? I'm not sure. The GOP's habit of nominating the primary runner up in the next election cycle would mean it would be Ted Cruz, but Trump's clowning of all the 2016 candidates would seemingly eliminate the possibility for any of them to run again in a party like the Republicans, whose base voters clearly want a strongman-type who can bully others into submission as their leader.

I think there are little things Clinton would do with Congress. She criticized TPP, but was for TPP probably if some stuff was adjusted. Obama got more support on TPP from the Democrats than the Republicans. Corporate tax reform was universally desired too.

Also, for all the hate for Clinton, she was better with people behind closed doors than Obama was. The only president who dealt with Congress and the Cabinet less than him was William Henry Harrison. I don't think it's unfair to call Obamacare BidenCare, given how Biden did a lot more to work with Congress than Obama did.

COVID is one of the many things that could be significantly affected by an HRC victory. Trump eliminated a pandemic response group within the National Security Council in 2018 and slashed the number of CDC personnel operating in Beijing by a third; there's really no way to be certain, but it's likely that with more outside observers looking for signs of a pandemic, Beijing would not be able to hide or downplay COVID as much as they did IOTL 2019.

Also likely is that there would be a lot more institutional memory at the highest levels, with Obama administration personnel who had been through the Ebola outbreak likely still around in an HRC administration. At any rate, the point person leading an COVID taskforce in a TL where it happens on schedule during a Hillary Clinton administration would certainly not be a guy whose last job was breeding Labradoodles.

Good points! Thanks for pointing that out.

Ginsburg reportedly wanted to have Clinton appoint her replacement, so she probably would retire early in Hillary's term, especially if Garland is confirmed in the lame-duck session before Obama leaves office.

Without the negative example of Ginsburg IOTL not leaving while Obama could appoint her replacement, I'd bet Breyer doesn't decide to retire before Hillary's term.

Breyer was by all intents and purposes a healthy guy when he stepped down, and I got the sense that he stepped down in part so Democrats could get a confirmation and blow off some steam that had been building up. If there were a Justice who could serve until his 90s, it would have been Breyer.

Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott lobbied for J. Michelle Childs for the Breyer seat OTL and pledged to deliver Biden 10 or 12 Republican Senate votes. If HRC is having headaches with confirmations (cabinet and Court), she seems like an easy bipartisan win. She seems moderate to conservative on matters like employment law, labor law, crime, etc., but took progressive positions on things like same-sex rights, vaccine mandates, and utility rate regulation.

I suspect Roberts would become something like Warren Burger 2.0 - voting left to control opinion assignments. He also would probably work with Kennedy and others like Kagan, Breyer, etc. to put together more moderate majority opinions.

It's hard to read where the Court would trend. Breyer was very moderate and sometimes conservative on religious issues, criminal law issues, and administrative law issues. Childs might sign onto the Janus decision of 2018, given her iffy labor record. Cases like Fulton v. City of Philadelphia (ruling for catholic adoption services on really really narrow grounds) could plausibly come out the same since Breyer took a position to the right of Roberts there when he joined Barrett's concurrence. Breyer and Kagan joined the bake-the-cake majority in 2017, again on really narrow grounds. But COVID-law definitely would be much more favorable to the Clinton Administration.

John Roberts (Moderate Conservative) (Moderate due to expediency)
Anthony Kennedy (Moderate Conservative)
Clarence Thomas (Conservative)
Stephen Breyer (Moderate Liberal)
Samuel Alito (Conservative)
Sonia Sotomayor (Liberal)
Elena Kagan (Moderate Liberal)
Merrick Garland (Moderate Liberal)
J Michelle Childs (Moderate Liberal)

 

[JesterBL]

There is one thing that I think gets memory holed in Clinton 2016 conversations, and that's that the Republicans controlled so many state legislatures that one or two more they'd be able to call an Article V convention. There were plans to do it, too, with the goal of passing a balanced budget amendment. Since 2018 ITTL would be probably another Republican year they would probably be able to go ahead with it.

A constitutional convention would fuck the political scene up - it's not entirely clear in the jurisprudence whether it would be confined to the proposed amendment for which it was called or if it would just "open the constitution" and allow for any kind of changes or the writing of an entirely new document.

Anyway - there is a good chance that the 2020 America facing covid ITTL has a completely unrecognizable political scene going on.

I've seen this bandied about but honestly, the Republican Party IOTL hasn't shown enough aptitude at internal politics or parliamentary maneuver that I severely doubt it would have happened. They just aren't that good at doing things.

 

[Lord Caedus]

I've seen this bandied about but honestly, the Republican Party IOTL hasn't shown enough aptitude at internal politics or parliamentary maneuver that I severely doubt it would have happened. They just aren't that good at doing things.

To add to this, the timing likely would not be politically advantageous to calling such a convention even if the GOP were disciplined enough to do it and adhere strictly to a balanced budget amendment (which, frankly, is pretty unlikely given this is the same party that did remarkably little when they had their first government trifecta in a dozen years and that has seen multiple Speakers of the House politically hobbled by their feral right-wing fringes within the past decade).

After the midterms, Republican energies would almost certainly be focused on ousting Clinton and (even more) investigations into her administration, probably resulting in her being the second President Clinton to be impeached. Given that it's congressional Republicans, it would probably be for something stupid like Benghazi and of course, she wouldn't be removed from office.

Diverting time and effort to an amendment that not only would tie the hands of the next president (who would likely be a Republican) in a way that the presidency hasn't been the case since the creation of the welfare state and modern military-industrial complex, while also giving Hillary a chance to lure Republicans into publicly backing cuts to entitlement programs, something that very few Americans actually want (Trump--the same idiot who looked at a solar eclipse without protection--was the only Republican candidate in 2016 who realized that people really, really like Medicare and Social Security, which is why he flips between saying he will leave those programs alone and traditional GOP orthodoxy, depending on what he thinks will help him the most at that given moment), and that failed massively the time the last GOP president ITTL tried it, would be something few ambitious party leaders or presidential candidates would want.

 

[Catalunya]

To add to this, the timing likely would not be politically advantageous to calling such a convention even if the GOP were disciplined enough to do it and adhere strictly to a balanced budget amendment (which, frankly, is pretty unlikely given this is the same party that did remarkably little when they had their first government trifecta in a dozen years and that has seen multiple Speakers of the House politically hobbled by their feral right-wing fringes within the past decade).

Isn’t the problem though that some state legislatures will inevitably pass calls for such a convention, on the backs of the more outright crazies who don’t have any level of longterm vision, and the rest of the party being forced to go along with it when pressure from the base leads to other states also gradually passing calls for a convention.

Would be hilarious if HRC wins because the GOP inevitably goes too far with the amendments, and now Americans don’t feel like rocking the boat anymore.

 

[JesterBL]

Isn’t the problem though that some state legislatures will inevitably pass calls for such a convention, on the backs of the more outright crazies who don’t have any level of longterm vision, and the rest of the party being forced to go along with it when pressure from the base leads to other states also gradually passing calls for a convention.

Would be hilarious if HRC wins because the GOP inevitably goes too far with the amendments, and now Americans don’t feel like rocking the boat anymore.

IOTL 19 states have done so. You need 34.

 

[MachiavelliJr]

The big three factors here are:

- The US has the same people in power at the CDC like Jackson said, it won't have much difference in terms of PPE or pre-existing health etc - Clinton has all the same advantages and disadvantages going in

- Trump was terrible and an idiot and did things like seize material the states needed, while Clinton is not - on its own, this would be good, tens of thousands more would live

- As Excelsior says, enough of the red state governors and state governments will oppose her on grounds of But That's Socialism that it will probably be harder to help these states, outside of any large Dem-voting cities - you'll get more deaths in the red states but also a lot more radicalised Republicans there

The last part is the biggest problem. In many countries, the opposition parties dialled it back on covid because they only want to rock the boat and not cut a hole in the bottom. The US won't get that.

Yeah basically this. Clinton will have vastly better national policies , stronger central coordination (she'll have access to the teams who managed the swine flu and Ebola scares, at least), somewhat better preparedness, and almost certainly get worse outcomes because no Republican governor is going to do any of the sensible things she tells them to until it's too late, nor will a Republican House be keen on financial support. And people TTL won't know that the federal response could have been ever so much worse; it still won't be internationally outstandingly great.

Don't underestimate the capacity of the Republicans to fuck it up (I can imagine total meltdown at the "betrayal of Trump by RINOs" narrative meeting the "we told you he was a joke candidate" narrative) but I think a second Clinton term would be vanishingly unlikely.

 

[Jackson Lennock]

I've seen this bandied about but honestly, the Republican Party IOTL hasn't shown enough aptitude at internal politics or parliamentary maneuver that I severely doubt it would have happened. They just aren't that good at doing things.

McConnell is good at doing things in his chamber. But beyond that, there's the continuing fallacy which is that the United States doesn't have political parties the way other countries have political parties. The US has weird amalgamations that may or may not have ideological coherency depending on a given year. And even when they're ideologically coherent, the parties often have massive gaps in terms of style, demeanor, method, tactics, which issues to prioritize, etc.

 

[History Learner]

Y’all sure COVID would even happen with a PoD almost four years before?

 

[GBW]

I think there's an overestimation of Trumpian acts by the GOP in a TL where Trump has been defeated in the 2016 election. Trump really led by example and his constant Tweeting while in the White House in OTL, which led to the mass denial a few months after the lockdown started in March 2020 as Trump realized that Covid wasn't going to look good in the lead up to his reelection. Thus all the "Like a miracle, it will disappear," by summer, proceeding to deny it was a thing, and somehow making the lockdown the fault of the Democrats and governors even though he was the one who declared a State of Emergency in March and called for the closure of civil society and much of the economy and handed things over to his coronavirus task force. Trump even attacked Georgia Governor Brian Kemp for trying to reopen his state barely a month later in April.

In this ATL, Trump's brand of politics is discredited and, while he might start up a TV network to air his grievances, there's the good possibility Trump TV will go the way of a good many of his previous business ventures (Trump Casinos, Trump Airlines, Trump Vodka, Trump: The Game, Trump Magazine, Trump Steaks, GoTrump.com, Trump University, Trump Mortgage, etc) and fail within a year. The only arena Trump had ever been really successful is real estate (aside from hosting The Apprentice) and Trump: Politician would have been yet another in the long list, and I doubt NBC would take him back as a TV host after the 2016 campaign. With him discredited and without his example in the White House, politicians he approves of become far less electable and the US Congress' obstructionist percentage remains lower despite the Tea Party holdovers from the early 2010s.

So Covid probably has far less deaths in this TL, IMO, but most people aren't going to realize how bad it would have been otherwise and take the whole thing for granted. Hillary Clinton remains unpopular enough in red states that it's highly likely that whoever the GOP puts up against her in 2020 will end up winning the election about as narrowly as Trump won in 2016 in OTL, again possibly with Hillary winning the popular vote but losing in the Electoral College. I doubt Trump will want another chance at the presidency after his loss in 2016, as he tended to put failed ventures behind himself pre-2016 and go back to his real estate bread and butter, though I think he'll have burned his bridges in New York City as he did in OTL with his presidential campaign. Trump may end up moving to Florida as he did in OTL to escape the hostility of his home town.

 

[Charles EP M.]

I was going to say "but Americans would know how bad covid could've been because of what it did elsewhere" and then remembered in OTL 'sceptics' world over ignored how bad it was where they lived, never mind abroad.

 

[JesterBL]

Trump's only one man; the rot is within the GOP, their institutions and their demographics. He was a follower, not a leader on Covid paranoia, so not having him at the top may help but it's delusional to think the GOP wouldn't have latched on to anti-anti-Covid policies- they would have the same incentives and the same bubbling-up of sentiment that led Trump to embrace it. (I don't buy the idea that parties really learn lessons from electoral defeat, it definitely doesn't appear that the GOP did, and there is the McCain-Romney-Trump arc to consider).

 

[Lord Caedus]

Trump's only one man; the rot is within the GOP, their institutions and their demographics. He was a follower, not a leader on Covid paranoia, so not having him at the top may help but it's delusional to think the GOP wouldn't have latched on to anti-anti-Covid policies- they would have the same incentives and the same bubbling-up of sentiment that led Trump to embrace it. (I don't buy the idea that parties really learn lessons from electoral defeat, it definitely doesn't appear that the GOP did, and there is the McCain-Romney-Trump arc to consider).

Indeed, a good thing to remember is that in 2016, a supermajority of Republican primary voters voted for candidates (Trump and Cruz) who not only denied that humans had contributed to climate change, but that climate change was even happening.

This is a party that for decades has fostered a distrust of government and intellectualism; Trump losing in 2016 won't change a culture that's built up for decades, at least since Reagan.