Emptying the Archive: An Alternate History: What if Clinton Won?
By: Martin Sawyer
Tags: Hillary Clinton, 2016 Election, Alternate History, Donald Trump

Note: As part of an ongoing project, I am posting many old essays that, for a variety of reasons, I decided not to post publicly at the time they were written. To the best of my ability, I will note at the beginning of each piece the context in which it was written.

I initially wrote this in early-to-mid 2017. The early months of the Trump Administration were awful (it did not get better), but Democratic successes in special elections (most notably, in Alabama), combined with the Republicans’ failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act, led me to start wondering about what the political landscape would look like had Hillary Clinton won. Obviously, we would have been better off from 2017–2020 with her in power. But, a narrow Clinton victory in 2016 would have been an abject disaster for the long-term prospects of American democracy. Whether protecting the long-term prospects of American democracy was worth the suffering under Trump, I am not sure and I do not attempt to answer in this piece.

In thinking about the likely ramifications of a narrow Clinton victory in 2016, it became clear to me that we were incredibly close to losing American democracy as we know it. Counterintuitively, a narrow Clinton loss may have been the best way to save it. So, this piece examines what would have happened had Clinton won an additional 1% of the vote, which would have flipped Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, and won Clinton the electoral college, but been insufficient to flip either body in Congress or the balance of power in the statehouses.

I want to be clear, this scenario, had it played out, would not have been the fault of Hillary Clinton alone (my worries that it would be interpreted this way, when many Democratic voters’ wounds were still raw and Clinton-Sanders vitriol still ran rampant, is the main reason I decided to wait until after the 2020 election to post this). It is an indictment on Republicans politicians, their voters, the country’s media, our system of governance which provides disproportionate power to Republican constituencies, and the likely Democratic response to a divided government.

Is James Comey a Time Traveler from the Future Sent Back to Save American Democracy?[1]

It is January of 2021, and American Democracy as we know it may be over. Republicans have defeated Hillary Clinton and captured the presidency, the last remaining obstacle to their consolidation of national power on a permanent basis. Let’s examine how we got here.

Part I: Introduction and Overview

Our tale begins with the epochal economic collapse of 2007, which unmasked the economic stratification and vulnerability that had become the hallmarks of the Reagan-era economy.[2] It takes us through the elevation of President Barack Obama in 2008, in large part in response to the financial crisis. It then moves through the failure of President Obama and Congressional Democrats to meaningfully and tangibly change the underlying socio-economic conditions, leading to a backlash against them in 2010. After 2010, the ascendant Republicans gerrymandered themselves into a decade-long majority at the local and state level and in the House of Representatives. The 2010 election crippled the remainder of Obama’s presidency, which led to the fascinating and consequential 2016 election between the competent and qualified Hillary Clinton and the volatile hatemonger, Donald Trump.

Hillary Clinton’s victory in 2016 was too narrow to break Republican control of Congress. With Republicans energized and liberals dejected, Republicans won handily at the state and federal level in 2018, echoing the Democratic disaster of 2010. Beset with partisan gridlock and with Republicans eager to make Clinton a one-term president, the federal government was paralyzed when the economy took a turn for the worse in 2020. Voters blamed the President and her party, leading to a resounding Republican victory in November.

With Inauguration Day 2021 approaching, Republicans look set to control the presidency, a filibuster-proof Senate majority and an impermeable gerrymander-protected House majority. It seems certain that the social safety net will be privatized and/or dismantled. Protections for disfavored groups and the environment are certain to be destroyed as well. Even more ominous, Republicans are in a position to insulate themselves from the consequences of their callousness, as they appear ready to manipulate election rules to guarantee that they will retain their power for a generation. As after 2010, Republicans control the levers of district drawing in all but a few states, making it exceedingly likely that the post-2020 gerrymander will resemble that which occurred after 2010. This time, they also control enough state governments to call for a constitutional convention, where it appears they will change the way elections are conducted, locking them into the presidency for the foreseeable future. After nearly 250 years of robust two-party democracy, and a 50-year experiment of multiracial democracy, the United States appears poised to transition into permanent one-party rule.

Part II: Getting to 2016

By 2007, the United States economy had suffered through roughly 27 years of neoliberalism and trickle-down economics — Reaganism.[3] The Reagan presidency drastically reformed the economic compact in the United States — a compact that hasn’t really been altered in the 32 years since George H.W. Bush succeeded him. Unsurprisingly, massive tax cuts for the wealthy made the wealthy wealthier. At the same time, technological advances and globalization rendered many middle class and working class jobs obsolete or offshorable, driving down wages and economic security among the working and middle classes. In short, Reaganism fomented immense economic inequality, even in times of expansion.

The Great Vulnerabilization of the middle class from 1980 through 2007 had catastrophic consequences when combined with the concurrent deregulation of the financial industry. Trickle-down economics changed the way American society allocated economic prosperity. Whereas prior to the Reagan Administration, white workers and the middle class shared in economic prosperity, Reaganism severed the connection between productivity gains and white middle and working class quality of life (that connection never really existed for many non-white workers). Middle and working class incomes stagnated as the wealthy monopolized the economy’s gains. Simultaneously, the deregulation of the financial industry during the Reagan and Clinton years led to massive consolidation of financial entities and the ability to create and gamble with opaque financial instruments.

In 2007, the house of cards that Reaganism built came crashing down under the not-so-watchful eye of President George W. Bush. A housing bubble popped, leaving millions of people drowning in debt and several too-big-to-fail financial institutions facing collapse as a result of their risky trades. Facing calamity in 2008, the federal government bailed out the financial institutions whose casino-style gambling on risky financial instruments had transformed a popped real estate bubble into the greatest threat to the world economy since 1929. It did not bail out the millions of homeowners who now could not afford their homes (many of whom were victims of predatory lending practices) or the tens of millions of people who had been excluded from sharing in society’s prosperity and productivity of the previous 25 years who now faced economic calamity.

Given the level of financial distress facing the nation, it is not at all surprising that the Democrats won a huge victory in 2008. Having already won a majority in the House in 2006 — in large part due to frustration with Republican governance — Democrats captured the presidency along with huge majorities in the House and Senate. Yet, Democrats completely misread the meaning of their victory. The 2008 election wasn’t so much a validation of the Democratic Party, but a repudiation of President Bush and the Republicans (and perhaps also a reflection of Barack Obama’s generational talent as a campaigner). Democrats failed to understand that now that they were in charge, after 2008 it would be the Democrats who would face the public’s ire if the government failed to deliver tangible benefits to the working and middle classes.

President Barack Obama and Congress could have addressed the economic shortfall and pass a Democratic agenda. Instead, he and his Congressional allies underestimated the lingering economic weakness and overestimated the resilience of their electoral coalition. The stimulus bill was undersized and suboptimally constructed, despite left-leaning economists warning that the real political and economic danger lay in passing an inadequate stimulus bill and being unable to get a second bite of the apple, not in passing an overlarge one. The stimulus bill (along with the Bush Administration bank bailout) prevented the economy from entering a depression, but it was far too small to break the deep recession, and economic weakness persisted through 2010.

Economic malaise combined to devastating effect with Republican engagement and Democratic apathy in 2010. In the two years since his election, President Obama and Congressional Democrats had largely demoralized their base. Despite having insurmountable majorities in Congress,[4] they decided against including a public option in the Affordable Care Act. Liberals were further enraged when President Obama chose to appoint a series of bankers to important administration positions and subsequently refused to hold financial institutions or executives accountable for their role in the financial crisis. Republicans, on the other hand, were engaged and enraged. Conservative politicians and media capitalized on the complexity of the ACA (and the skin color of its architect) and the bailout of the banks to manipulate their base into directing their outrage towards those currently in power — now the Democrats — in lieu of the actual architects of their vulnerability — neoliberals.

Republican voters showed up in force in the 2010 election, while Democratic voters did not. As a result, Republicans captured the House, dramatically reduced the Democratic majority in the Senate, and captured state and local governments across the country. Controlling all the requisite levers of power in swing states such as Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Virginia (to say nothing of large conservative states such as Texas), Republicans used the post-2010-census redistricting to gerrymander themselves into permanent state-level majorities in conservative and swing states. These gerrymanders also guaranteed a Republican majority in the House through 2020, so long as there were no significant Democratic wave elections.

The ascendant Republicans, ensconced in safe districts and more fearful of primary challengers from their right than general election challenges from their left, used their newfound power to sabotage President Obama’s presidency. They created a series of hostage-style crises in which threatened the country with default on its debt or a government shutdown unless they received concessions. Despite the economy still displaying persistent weakness, President Obama was forced to engage in counterproductive austerity to avoid default (e.g. the sequester) even though textbook economics suggested that increased deficit-spending was the appropriate course of action. Republicans further sabotaged President Obama by gutting his signature achievement — the Affordable Care Act. With the Supreme Court’s blessing, many Republican-led states declined to fully implement the law, particularly Medicaid expansion and setting up individual plan exchanges, and then successfully deflected the blame for the resulting problems to President Obama and Congressional Democrats — the architects of the law.

With government basically at a gridlocked standstill and each side blaming the other for the continuing tepid recovery from the Great Recession and the problems with the ACA, the 2012 and 2014 elections reaffirmed the status quo. Democrats held onto the presidency and Republicans held onto the gerrymandered House and state legislative bodies, along with the vast majority of governorships. The Senate switched hands in 2014, but this was largely due to Republicans picking up seats in conservative states.[5] Entering the 2016 election, Republicans appeared set to hold the House fairly comfortably (due to gerrymandering) and the Democrats appeared poised to recapture the Senate (due to a favorable map).

Part III: The 2016 Election

The 2016 election will long be remembered as one of the most fascinating ones in American history. In a sense, it was very much a status quo election: Democratic voters voted Democratic and Republicans voted Republican. Yet, in other ways it was a groundbreaking election. For the first time in generations, populist outsider candidates seriously threatened the party establishments, with Hillary Clinton fending off a far-sturdier-than-expected primary challenge from Bernie Sanders and lunatic Donald Trump defeating over a dozen Republicans to capture his party’s nomination. Hillary Clinton was a heavy favorite in the general election against the incompetent and obviously racist and misogynistic Donald Trump, yet on election day the result was a few points closer than polling had led observers to expect. Clinton won the popular vote by around three percentage points (a popular vote margin of between four and five million votes), yet because of the electoral college, the result turned on three agonizingly close states — Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Clinton won all three,[6] barely, won the presidency amidst an almighty Republican uproar. Meanwhile, Republicans held onto a majority in the House and narrowly held onto the Senate, 52–48.

Part IV: The Hillary Clinton Presidency

With Hillary Clinton in the White House, Republicans in Congress immediately ratcheted up their investigations into Benghazi and then-Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server. They also opened an investigation into alleged voter fraud during the 2016 election. Despite there being no evidence of any wrongdoing on any of these issues, these three faux “scandals” plagued President Clinton through her first two years of office as the media breathlessly reported every mundane development as further evidence of her mendacity. Republican politicians toured the country calling President Clinton corrupt and a criminal and riled up crowds nationwide by questioning the legitimacy of her election. As Republicans treated President Clinton as illegitimate, the media did little to push back on this narrative. Encouraged by the public and media reaction to their opposition, Republicans took the unprecedented step of refusing to confirm several of President Clinton’s major cabinet appointments. They also refused to confirm any of her nominations to fill the still-vacant Supreme Court seat formerly occupied by Antonin Scalia.

By the time the 2018 election rolled around, opposition by an intransient Republican Congress had prevented President Clinton from achieving any of the popular items in her campaign platform. Her few achievements were exactly the sort that liberals feared she would make during the contentious 2016 primary. Unable to convince intransient hardline Republicans to support anything in her liberal platform, her major accomplishments were limited to implementing the Trans Pacific Partnership and intervening militarily in Syria and Iraq. Furthermore, prevented from appointing liberals to several cabinet positions, President Clinton ultimately acquiesced to Republican opposition and nominated insiders and centrists to fill her cabinet. It was a justifiable decision, since those in power were Bush Administration holdovers and the centrist replacements were obvious improvements. Less justifiable was her decision to nominate a centrist to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated by Justice Scalia. It was quite dispiriting for liberals and leftists, who were dejected and demoralized by the time 2018 rolled around. Making matters worse for the 2018 election, Republican controlled state governments had, predictably, used the obviously bogus voter fraud allegations as an excuse to pass draconian voter suppression measures.

The Republican rank-and-file, on the other hand, entered the 2018 election energized and ready to voice their opposition to President Clinton. As a result, the 2018 election played out like 2010. Republicans won handily. Because the House was already gerrymandered, Democrats only lost a few seats. But the real damage was in the Senate, where a challenging map meant that Democrats lost nine seats,[7] and in the states, where Republicans held onto governorships in all but the most liberal of states and retained their dominance over a multitude of state legislatures.

In the final year of Clinton’s presidency, the economy began showing signs of weakness.[8] Rather than cooperate with President Clinton and congressional Democrats on developing and passing a stimulus package, Republicans actively worked to exacerbate economic weakness to engineer a recession. When the economy went into a tailspin, tax receipts dropped precipitously while outlays on countercyclical government programs (e.g. unemployment benefits) spiked. Facing a massive deficit, Republicans refused to raise the debt ceiling unless President Clinton agreed to catastrophic spending cuts. Unwilling to risk a default on US debt, Clinton begrudgingly agreed to the poisoned chalice. While the decision prevented a default, the resultant federal austerity, combined with similar austerity at the state level, further damaged the reeling economy. Furthermore, the spending cuts alienated many liberals and leftists who felt that Hillary Clinton, like Obama before her, was too eager to bow to Republican demands during their manufactured hostage crises.

In the aftermath of the recession, President Clinton and the Democrats lost the narrative over the economic downturn. President Clinton was most certainly correct that Republicans sabotaged the economy by insisting on austerity rather than stimulus and threatening a default, but it didn’t matter. Conservatives blamed Hillary Clinton and the Democrats for the economic hardship and their voters, living in a conservative news bubble, believed every bit of it. Democrats, on the other hand, remained bitterly divided about whether to support President Clinton, with many liberals and progressives unsympathetic to her plight. The Bernie Sanders wing of the party believed that the economic malaise of 1980–2019 was caused in large part by the Clinton wing’s embrace of big money and neoliberalism. Many also still harbored resentment from the 2016 primary as they felt that Hillary Clinton had won illegitimately, relying on insider favoritism and a disingenuous performative move to the left to stifle Sanders’s challenge. President Clinton’s four years in office and its lack of progress on progressive priorities had not done anything to assuage these lingering feelings. Besieged from the left and right, President Clinton found no shelter in the middle, as the mainstream media did little to push back on Republican narrative-spinning and breathlessly reported on the revolt to Clinton’s left and the ongoing (faux) “scandals” plaguing her.

Hillary Clinton ran for re-election in 2020, but was resoundingly defeated. As a sitting president she faced a surprisingly robust primary. Though not particularly popular nationwide or among independents, including those on the left, Clinton remained persistently popular among the Democratic rank-and-file. With Clinton loyalists controlling the primary process and with her residual popularity within the Democratic Party, President Clinton earned the Democratic nomination despite a previously-little-known Sanders-esque challenger winning several states.[9] However, with the economy in shambles, Clinton’s progressive promises of 2016 remaining unfulfilled, and Republicans not nominating a lunatic this time around, Clinton could not wrangle the support from the left in 2020 as she had done in 2016. Democratic turnout dropped to pre-Obama levels and many left-leaning independents voted third-party. Republicans, on the other hand, were energized, engaged and unified.

The election was close considering the amount of dissatisfaction with the country’s state of affairs and the splintering of the left, but the Republican presidential nominee defeated Hillary Clinton by a 48–46 margin, capturing 337 electoral votes to Clinton’s 201. Despite having what appeared to be a decent electoral map, Democrats lost a Senate seat, leaving Republicans with a 62–38 margin. The House remained firmly in Republican hands, as did state legislatures in all but a handful of deep blue states.

Part V: 2021 and Beyond

After Inauguration Day 2021, Republicans will control enough power in the Federal Government to enact their regressive agenda. It is unclear whether the ultimate blows will be dealt by the Supreme Court,[10] or through legislation, but either way they are inevitable at this point. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare will be either dismantled or privatized. The Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act all face repeal. As do the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Violence Against Women Act, Lily Ledbetter Act, and various other legislative protections of disfavored groups. The Sherman Antitrust Act is slated for gutting. The inheritance tax and capital gains taxes will be eliminated, while the federal income tax will be replaced by a regressive national sales tax. Sadly, it looks like Republicans will not face significant electoral consequences for upending 100 years of popular government programs (whether legislatively or through the courts), as they have gerrymandered themselves into districts where these changes are not so unpopular as to significantly threaten their re-election in 2022.

The dismantling of the progressive protections established over the past century doesn’t even appear to be the worst of what the United States faces. Republican control over statehouses nationwide is so ironclad that have begun the process of calling a constitutional convention that will entrench their power for a generation. Remarkably, in 2021 Republicans have complete control over 38 states, one more than they need to call for a constitutional convention.[11] Discussed amendments to the Constitution include a Balanced Budget Amendment (which would effectively eliminate the ability of the federal government to provide a social safety net in times of economic hardship and act as a one-way ratchet to diminish the size of the government), a Personhood Amendment (which would effectively eliminate the ability of women to control their reproductive choices), a Religious Freedom Exemption (which would prevent any person from having to comply with any state or federal law that infringes on their religious beliefs, an exemption that would open a loophole for any individual or company to discriminate against anybody it wants on “religious” grounds), and a clarification that, aside from the right to bear arms, the 14th Amendment does not apply against the states, thereby making it impossible for the federal government to prevent state and local governments from implementing discriminatory laws and practices.

Even more ominous, Republicans have proposed changes to federal elections that will entrench them in power for at least a generation. Republicans have proposed requiring that senators be elected by state legislators, rather than by popular vote. Given the state-level gerrymanders, this change would guarantee that Republicans will control a veto-proof majority in the Senate for the foreseeable future. Republicans have also proposed allocating electoral votes by congressional district (as was already done in Maine and Nebraska), which, when combined with their forthcoming gerrymanders, makes them virtually certain to retain the presidency for the foreseeable future as well. Further, Republicans have proposed several restrictions on voting in federal elections, including (1) requiring voters to provide voter ID, which must be obtained at that voter’s expense, (2) imposing literacy tests on all persons seeking to register to vote who cannot produce a high school diploma from a “non-failing” high school, a designation which predictably excludes many minority-dominated schools, (3) imposing poll taxes so that voters bear the financial burden of election administration, and (4) permanently disenfranchising all persons ever convicted of a felony. Absent a major realignment, the Democratic coalition — based in large part on protecting people and groups disfavored in American society — stands on the precipice of permanent minority status.

Although the Republican legislative and constitutional proposals are not particularly popular among the nation writ-large, Republican politicians don’t seem to care. With their seats gerrymandered to be safe from Democratic challenge, Republican politicians fear only the consequences of upsetting their conservative donors and base, who will enforce party discipline if Republican officeholders balk at their chance to implement their regressive agenda and consolidate their power. As the Republicans are all too eager to remind the nation (when they win), elections have consequences. Alas, here in late 2020, it appears that one of these consequences is that the great American experiment in democracy may be over. The United States appears poised to succumb to fascism and as Sinclair Lewis famously predicted, it came wrapped in the flag and carrying a bible.

Footnotes

[1] This title is, obviously, a joke. To be clear, I do not blame Comey for Clinton’s loss. Had Comey not interfered, Clinton would have won, but in a close election, any number of events are technically outcome determinative. The real problem was that the election was as close as it was. The rest of the piece should make clear who I actually hold ultimately responsible for creating the conditions that risked a Trump presidency.

[2] We can pick any number of starting points for this story. We have a long national history of compromises that have allowed our nation’s moral failings to fester and metastasize. Other than Abraham Lincoln, we have never had a President with the moral courage to do what is necessary to confront and correct our worst instincts and practices. Decades of politicians either didn’t see, chose to ignore, or addressed with half-measures and compromises the immorality of slavery, Jim Crow and now, Mass Incarceration. We presided over a centuries-long genocide of this continent’s native population. We were eager participants in colonialism — denying our hemispheric neighbors and oil-rich Middle Eastern nations the exact same independence and self-determination that we pride ourselves on. And so on and so forth. As in most histories, the causes of our long-term malaise can probably be traced back into our nation’s origins, but for the purposes of brevity, we will begin this story in 2007.

[3] This story of socio-economic malaise under neoliberalism and trickle-down economics is not uniquely American. The changes in the US economy during this era were roughly paralleled in the United Kingdom. And though the implementation and consequences of Thatcherism may not have been identical to those of Reaganism, the fall of American democracy that resulted in the US seems to be paralleled by what appears to be the imminent fall of the United Kingdom. As in the United States, it was the slow destruction of the economic compact, an unwinding that began under Thatcher and was left unaddressed by Labour under Blair’s leadership, that ultimately resulted in the Brexit vote of 2016. Now, if put to referendum, I suspect Scotland would vote for independence. The break with the European Union also poses serious risks in Northern Ireland, where open borders with Ireland was a major component to the region’s fragile peace, and a majority of the population would probably prefer reunification with Ireland rather than remaining part of the UK.

[4] From Obama’s inauguration through the 2010 election, Democrats held a roughly 30-seat advantage in the House of Representatives and 59 or 60 seats in the Senate seat. If Democrats were serious about implementing their purported priorities, they could have done so. Rather than stand behind their convictions, however, Democrats chose to hide behind “impediments” that they had the power to remove. For example, Democrats could have eliminated the filibuster at the first sign that Republicans were abusing it.

[5] The most liberal Republican Senate pick-up in 2014 was in Colorado. Of the other Republican gains, the only states that could even be categorized as swing-states were Iowa and North Carolina. The remaining states that shifted from Democrat to Republican were all comfortably red.

[6] It should be obvious, but this is where our story diverges from the reality. In reality, Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote by around two percentage points and around three million votes. This piece assumes that she ran 1% better than she actually did, just enough to carry her to victory in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, three states sufficient to give her an electoral college victory.

[7] In 2018, Democrats had to defend seats in five red states (Indiana, West Virginia, North Dakota, Montana and Missouri), six swing states (Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Virginia and Florida), and three moderately-blue states (Maine, Minnesota and New Mexico). The only real pick-up opportunity for the Democrats was in Nevada, a swing state under normal electoral circumstances. Given the electorate’s mood, it was unsurprising that in the end, Democrats lost seats in the five red states, as well as in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Florida. They also failed to win in Nevada.

[8] [A note from 2021 — Obviously, I did not foresee the 2020 pandemic. It is easy, however, to see how Republican hostility could have led to similar federal government calamity. Republican officeholders have proven time and again they do not care as much about the pain and suffering of their constituents as the accumulation of power, so it would not have been remotely surprising to see Republicans in Congress and in the statehouses intentionally sabotage the executive branch’s efforts to mitigate the harm from the pandemic. I severely doubt the Clinton Administration’s response, even if hamstrung by Republicans hell-bent on sabotage would have been as calamitous as Trump’s. But, it still would have been suboptimal and Clinton would likely have been seen as a failure. Many of the seeds of our COVID vulnerability were sewn long before Clinton entered office (for example, the lack of paid sick leave, and the practice of surprise billing which makes underinsured people reticent to seek medical care until on death’s door), and no matter how heroic her administration worked to address the crisis, there still would have been immense suffering, for which Clinton would probably have been blamed.]

[9] Think someone along the lines of Raul Grijalva, or Jeff Merkeley. These politicians have some cachet with the Sanders wing, but are largely unknown outside of political junkies and in the circumstances of the 2020 primary, would certainly be able to muster support similar what Sanders built in 2016.

[10] The unexpected Supreme Court vacancy resulting from Scalia’s passing only acted as a temporary reprieve from conservative dominance of the Court. With Republicans refusing to confirm any nominee perceived of as left-of-center, President Clinton and Republican Senators eventually compromised on a moderate conservative (in the mold of Justice Kennedy) to replace Scalia. Justice Kennedy, still the swing vote, remained on the Court through the entirety of Clinton’s administration. This ensured that a Republican could name his replacement, and he will surely be replaced by a staunch conservative, making the moderate-conservative replacement for Scalia the new swing vote. Making matters worse, because it was obvious that Senate Republicans would not let Clinton fill her seat with a like-minded replacement, Justice Ginsburg remained on the Court rather than retire. Now it is inevitable that she will be replaced by a conservative when her health fails, and this will cement an ironclad conservative majority on the Court with Roberts — who is hostile to civil rights, voting rights, and government intervention in furtherance of economic justice — acting as the swing vote.

[11] Republicans control the governorship and legislature in all states except California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont. Scarily, the prospect of a constitutional convention is not-at-all-farfetched. Following the 2016 election, Republicans already completely controlled 25 states, and 13 more states under split control looked vulnerable to Republican takeover if Republicans won 2018 and 2020. As of 2016, 7 of these 13 states had Republican majorities in both bodies of the legislature, but had Democratic governors who were either termed out or faced difficult re-election campaigns prior to 2021 (Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia). In several other states with Democratic governors, Republicans needed only a handful of legislative seats to grab a majority (Alaska (two seats in the lower legislative body), Colorado (five seats in the lower body), Connecticut (four seats in the lower body, one in the upper body) and Washington (2 seats in the lower body). In Maine, Republicans needed to pick up three seats in one of its legislative bodies to control all the levers of state power. Given the level of electoral backlash against Democrats in 2018 and 2020, it is unsurprising that Republicans were able to take over these states.