What If Hillary Clinton Won in 2016?

Her coalition would have fractured

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.): “If Hillary Clinton becomes president, I am going to do everything I can do to make sure four years from now, we still got an opening on the Supreme Court.” He joked about her getting shot if she became president.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, pledged that if Hillary won the 2016 election and if a Supreme Court opened up, the Senate would wait until after the 2020 election to fill it.

House Republicans Preparing Years of Investigations of Hillary Clinton (Washington Post, October, 2016)

Perhaps one reason alternate history is so popular is that many Americans, in the “era of Donald Trump,” feel they are living in an alternate history or a parallel universe. They read the NYT and thought articles like this from April 2016 were reliable: Electoral Map is a Reality Check on Trump’s Bid.

They feel Trump could not have possibly won the presidency fairly in a rational world…but in our timeline he somehow did, by fluke, hook or crook.

So how would the world be different, or surprisingly similar, if Hillary Clinton won in 2016?

The above videos assess her fictional first year. For her supporters (and Bernie Sanders supporters) who wanted a dramatic change, she could not have delivered it because the Republican Congress would have blocked her. From the supporters’ perspectives, she wouldn’t do the damage Trump is doing, she wouldn’t be so disruptive, but she would not be able to get a lot done. It would be frustrating for all, a dreary repeat of the partisan warfare of the 1990s and extension of the stalemates of the later Obama years when Republicans controlled Congress.

Ultimately, she would get little credit for not being Trump, since people didn’t expect him to win anyway. (Trump gets credit from some of his supporters for “not being Hillary Clinton,” as if that was the main reason to vote for him.)

Strong Economy, More Fiscal Responsibility Than Under Trump

The economy would be humming along in 2017, 2018 and 2019 with low unemployment (4% or lower), and low inflation, expanding jobs, but not significantly expanding wages (just as in our timeline). Clinton would not allow Congress to pass such a huge tax cut — she would threaten to veto it — so the deficit due to the revenue shortfall would be lower.

The economy would tank in 2020, with the global pandemic, and Republicans would blame Clinton, though she, like Trump, would not have caused the pandemic nor the economic downturn. She might have acted far quicker than Trump to mobilize the nation on social distancing, but would have gotten absolutely no credit. Even if the death toll was dramatically less than under Trump’s watch, she would get no credit and would be blamed. It’s hard enough for one party to hold the White House for 12 years. Hillary would have had an impossible task holding her party together and winning the election in 2020.

Even if Hillary Clinton, by objecting to the unnecessary Republican tax cut, grew the economy to a surplus, ready to handle an emergency such as the coronavirus, she would have deeply frustrated her liberal base in doing so and faced primary opposition in 2020.

Supreme Court Battles

She would perhaps fill at least one Supreme Court vacancy, unless Republicans, holding the Senate 51-49, vote to block a ninth member of the Supreme Court for four full years. Anthony Kennedy (a Reagan appointee) probably would not have retired to make way for another conservative as he did when Trump was president.

And with a 51-49 Senate majority, Republicans would likely use every delaying tactic or smear campaign available, as Democrats did with the Brett Kavanaugh nomination, to prevent Clinton from appointing two Supreme Court justices.

The high court is supposed to be above politics, but when the stakes are so high for liberal and conservative ideologies, with 5-4 votes on contentious issues, both parties pull out all the stops.

Put Down Violent Rebellion By Trump Supporters?

Donald Trump probably would not have accepted the results of the 2016 election if he lost — he, in fact, said before the election that he would only accept the results if he won, he could have incited a rebellion by the alt-right after the election that turned violent, but would have been put down, by National Guardsmen if necessarily called out by President Obama.

Republican Move to Impeach Comey

Clinton and her supporters blame FBI Director James Comey for her loss, for destroying her momentum in the final weeks by announcing that he was re-opening the investigation into her emails, and then quietly closing it in the days before the election.

But suppose he didn’t make such an announcement? Soon after the election, conservatives within the FBI would leak or “reveal” to Fox News that Comey had “new information” about Clinton’s emails but did not let the public know before the election. The Republican Congress would have leaped onto this, sought to impeach Comey for partisanship, and tied this “scandal” into endless investigations into it, along with Benghazi, the Clinton Foundation, her email server, and everything else they could throw at her.

Without a popular, positive, practical political agenda with a chance of passing Congress, political parties unify based on what they are against, what they hate. For the Republican Party, it’s Hillary Clinton. For the Democratic Party, it’s currently Donald Trump.

Same Divisive, Hyper-Partisan Media Landscape

The divisive media landscape that existed before the 2016 election would continue, only more so. Fox News and MSNBC would trade places — Fox would be obsessed with presidential “scandals” and MSNBC would be obsessed with defending the president.

The other networks — typically adversarial with presidents — would be hard on Clinton but probably not as hard as they are on Trump.

Fake or false news that confirms biases on the right and left would be just as prominent on social media as it is now, and Facebook would be just as tribal.

Reliving Clinton Nightmares

In late 2017, Edward Klein, a former New York Times Magazine editor, reported that four women have threatened to file sexual assault allegations against Clinton in his post-presidential years if he does not offer them substantial payouts.  “The women claim Mr Clinton assaulted them while they were in their late teens and working for playboy billionaire investor Ron Burkle,” the UK Telegraph reported. If Clinton does not pay them, they threaten to go public with the allegations.

If true, this is clearly addictive, if not chronic predatory behavior. Either that or Clinton is an “easy mark” for gold diggers. Klein has been criticized by inaccurate reporting by both left and right, using gossip from anonymous sources. Even Rush Limbaugh has doubted some of his quotes against the Clintons. Klein’s books do seem to have an axe to grind against the Clintons.

But such defenses of the Clintons are too facile if we have evolved to “believe women until the evidence proves that they are not telling the truth,” as Hillary Clinton has suggested. When I read of these post-2016 allegations, I thank God the Clintons are not back in the White House and we are not reliving 1990s nightmares.

Bill Clinton was Hillary Clinton’s Achilles Heel in 2016, no question about that, and would continue to be if she became president. 

The public would not know who to believe, the atmosphere of distrusting the media and politicians would be just as prevalent as it is now.

Fewer Gains for Democrats in 2018 Midterm Elections

If Clinton were president, the historical pattern of the political party that holds the White House loses seats in the midterms would mean that Republicans would probably increase their majorities in the House and Senate, rather than lose seats.

By 2020, the public would have a huge case of Clinton fatigue and Republicans would probably sweep all three branches of government.

The news would be filled with allegations of so-called Clinton Foundation scandals. The Republican Congress would probably vote narrowly for Hillary’s impeachment in 2017 or 2018, no matter the evidence, declaring her corrupt and “illegitimate” because Comey and the FBI were biased in her favor. Like Trump, Hillary Clinton would call it a “witch hunt,” with additional allusions to misogyny, and burning witches at the stake.

Maybe a majority of the public would wise up or see through this political game and send Congress a message to drop it and move on with the people’s business. There might be a reaction against the Republicans’ over-reach, as there was in 1998 when surprisingly Democrats won seats in the midterms as Republicans announced their intention to impeach Hillary’s husband against the public will. Bill Clinton sustained approval ratings well over 50 percent during the impeachment saga, in part because the economy was strong. (Trump, with approval ratings in the high 30s, does not have that advantage.)

Hillary as president would be significantly more popular than Trump — she isn’t as impulsive, doesn’t tweet without thinking things through, or start unnecessary fights. She’s more knowledgeable of issues and a more strategic thinker. She probably would garner some approval ratings above 50 percent, but overall, because the country is so divided, she probably could not sustain popularity beyond the 48 percent of the popular vote that she received in the 2016 election compared to Trump’s 46 percent. Her popularity would waver between a low of 40 percent and a high of 53 percent, compared to Trump’s low of 30 percent and high of 46 percent.

Slim Chance for Progressive Immigration Reform Under Hillary

Hillary might get Congress to agree on investments in infrastructure since both the Democratic and Republican platforms called for it.

The prospects for an immigration bill satisfactory to Clinton’s progressive base would probably be no better in her first two years than they are under Trump because the nativist faction of the GOP would still try to stir up fear in the Republican base. Remember that the last time an immigration bill almost passed, in 2007, George W. Bush favored a relatively progressive approach and Congress was Democratic. But Senator John McCain reversed himself as he got close to the Republican presidential primaries because he was afraid of a nativist backlash that would deprive him of the nomination or the presidency.

Senator Edward Kennedy said in memoirs published posthumously that Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid delayed the vote because he felt Democrats could use immigration as a cudgel against Republicans in the 2008 election.

The same would be true in 2017/18. Each political faction would look for advantages on immigration.

Progressives Would Be Frustrated By Her Economic Moderation, Cold War-mongering Toward Russia

Bernie Sanders supporters would probably criticize Hillary Clinton’s economic policies as too moderate. They would cite her free trade policies, not slapping tariffs on foreign goods to protect American manufacturing jobs. (Trump is doing that, but leftists don’t give him much credit.)

Clinton would have confronted Russia head-on over its attempts to undermine Western democracies with cyber-attacks and would have warned strongly against Putin’s embrace of fascism.

Sanders supporters would certainly criticize her foreign policy as too hawkish, for being too tough on Russia, for not respecting Russia’s sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, for punishing Russia with harsh sanctions for interfering in the US elections when the US “does the same thing” or has interfered in the internal affairs of multiple countries.

Clinton in 2014 called Russia’s aggression in Ukraine similar to “what Hitler did back in the 1930s,” invading Rhineland. Putin “believes his mission is to restore Russian greatness,” she said. “When he looks at Ukraine, he sees a place that he believes is by its very nature part of Mother Russia.”

If Clinton had been elected despite Russia’s attempted online interference in the 2016 election, many on both the left and right would have yawned and said “what’s the big deal? They weren’t successful.” They probably would have accused Clinton of stirring up a hornet’s nest and unnecessarily reverting to a tense Cold War posture with Russia.

Hillary Clinton would have continued to arouse suspicion, distrust, and antipathy on the left as well as right. As leftist Hollywood producer, Oliver Stone noted to the (UK) Guardian in 2013, “I can’t stand her!” He cited an article she wrote for Foreign Affairs, referring to the 21st century as America’s Pacific century, “arguing that China can and should be contained. She’s like those idiots on Fox News who make an enemy of China by presenting them as a threat. Who’s the threat? We have 800 to 1,000 foreign bases; they have one.”

Certainly, the American left-wing voices defending Russian perspectives on cyber-hacking and relations with the US and Europe, as exemplified in The Nation magazine, would be given much more credence in the U.S. media if Clinton were president than they are when Trump is president. That’s the nature of a media that has a bias toward spotlighting political conflict, particularly within the political party that holds the White House.

With the left wing of the Democratic Party only mildly supporting Clinton if at all, and if historical patterns are a judge, she would have faced primary opposition and little chance of winning re-election in 2020 after 12 years of Democrats holding the White House.

Would Republicans Broaden Appeal to Women and Minorities? 

In fact, the Republicans — if they learned the lessons of 2016, no longer tolerating the misogyny, nativism, and racism of Trump, if they broadened their base to appeal to more professional women, minorities, and immigrants — would be almost assured of winning the presidency in 2020 if they picked someone like former South Carolina Governor (and current United Nations ambassador) Nikki Haley.

In short, Hillary Clinton, perhaps like Donald Trump, but certainly like Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, would be a transitional one-term president at a transitional time in America.

They all were destined to see the fragile coalition which elected them fragment when they ran for re-election.

Summary: 10 Reasons Hillary’s Presidency Would Have Been Miserable For All
If HRC had won an extra 80000 votes in 3 states, the country would be similarly divided, miserable, on the national level, though not her fault.

1. The “me too” movement would target Bill Clinton. Tabloids would continue to report rumors of his extra-marital affairs assuming they are true. Monica came out in 2018 in a Vanity Fair interview saying his affair with her was an abuse of power on his part, changing her previous stance that it was a consensual relationship. Hillary would be put in the awkward position of defending him, saying as she did recently that Monica was an adult who could take responsibility for her own behavior.

2. The Sanders left would be very dissatisfied, criticizing her for starting a new cold war with Russia, when all Putin did was try to intervene in US elections the way we have done in myriad countries, including helping Boris Yeltsin in 1996. The left would blame her for breaking her promises when her agenda would be blocked by Republican Congress. She would only serve one term.

3. Republicans would block her Supreme Court appointments, 51-49, leaving the high court with only 8 or 7 justices for 4 years. They would win seats in the midterms or at least maintain their majorities in both houses.

4. Republican Congress would impeach James Comey for not revealing two weeks before the election that Hillary was under investigation again re her emails. They would accuse him of swaying the election on her behalf.

5. Republicans in Congress would impeach Hillary no matter the evidence, but they would not have enough Senate votes to remove her. Hillary, like Trump, would call it a witch hunt and she would be correct. But those Democratic senators in red states who did not vote to remove her — in WVA, MT, MO — and in swing states like FL — would probably lose their seats because the Republican right would be riled up, and turn out in large numbers.

6. Sanders or Warren would challenge Hillary in the 2020 primaries, mortally wound her.

7. A Republican like Nikki Haley would be nominated by the GOP, proving they aren’t misogynistic, and she would win the presidency in 2020.

8. In 2018, the economy would be strong without over-stimulation from the tax cut, the deficit would be smaller but Republicans would excoriate Clinton for any deficit spending.

9. Hillary would not be able to address the underlying problem of massive inequality in wealth because she doesn’t have the votes in Congress to do so. The US would be headed toward recession in 2020, which would hurt Clinton’s chances for re-election.

10. Haley as president after 2020 would adopt Hillary’s hard line toward Russia, continue trickle-down economics and the massive inequality would continue, get worse.

Drill Deeper:

• American left-wing voices defending Russia’s position on cyber-hacking, relations with the US and Europe.