Has Trump done American liberals a favor the last four years?

For the past four years, I've infuriated friends when I've told them that, in the long run, Trump being elected in 2016 was the best result for liberals and America in general in the long term.  After my friends stopped screaming at me, I would describe four scenarios:

1.  Bernie Sanders elected president in 2016 

With Republican House and Senate majorities, nothing Sanders would propose would have a chance of being enacted.  As Saunders would probably not have chosen Jeff Sessions as his Attorney General, Jones would not have been elected Alabama's junior senator in a special election, leaving the Republican majority in the Senate at 52.  In the midterms of 2018, with a Democrat in the White House, Democrats would probably have lost the red state Senators they managed to keep and would have lost even more seats in the House, so we're talking about Republicans holding 55-56 Senate seats and maybe 250 House seats after the midterms.  There was plentiful support in the summer of 2016 among Republican Senators for refusing to consider Democratic nominations to the Supreme Court even after the election, as any Republican who voted for a Democrat's nominee would be "primaried" out of office for disloyalty.  Therefore Scalia's seat would probably remain empty for four years.  Kennedy's seat would likely have remained empty as well if he resigned, which he, as Republican with a Democrat in the White House, may not have done.  Obfuscation of federal judges' nominations under Obama would have continued unabated with a new president.  Sanders' wife was in the midst of investigations at Burlington College when he was running for office.  Every Committee chairman in the house and senate would try to find an angle to stage hearings on the issue (remember Whitewater?). 

Seen as ineffective because of Republican obfuscation, Sanders would lose to a Republican in 2020 who would probably pick up a few more seats in both houses of Congress. Over the past 120 years, voters have only accepted one party's control of the White House for more than three terms once with Franklin Roosevelt, the greatest president of the century, and his successor, Harry Truman.  With a huge House majority and a substantial Senate majority, perhaps filibuster-proof with seats picked up in 2018 and 2020, Republicans could change America's social safety net, fill seats on lower federal courts as well as Supreme Court, and make tax changes for the wealthy that would make the 2017 tax law seem like unbridled income redistribution to the poor.  ACA would be repealed in full, Medicaid reduced, voting rights gutted, well, you get the idea.  

With a Democrat in the White House during state elections in 2017-2020, more state legislatures would probably fall under complete Republican control leading to more gerrymandering, tax cuts that gut education and services, and more attempts to disenfranchise all but the whites or wealthy of many states.  The country would be very different.  And with such huge majorities and gerrymandering after the 2020 census in states with Republican trifectas in both houses, the normal loss of seats at midterms would not jeopardize their majorities.  

The President elected in 2020 would probably have a good chance at re-election in 2024, as most presidents elected in the past century or so with a change of party control of the White House get a second term (Consider winners of elections in 2008, 2000, 1992, 1980, 1968, 1960 (LBJ re-elected), 1952, 1944 (Truman re-elected),  1932, 1920, and 1912 who were all re-elected.  The only exception to the pattern was Jimmy Carter in 1976, who dealt with a lack of Democratic Party support, economic troubles, and the first foreign policy problem in 30 years that did not involve the Soviet Union, Islamic nationalism in the form of the Iranian Revolution.).   Eight years of Republican trifecta.  Just imagine what that would do to the lives of every American.

2.  Hilary Clinton elected president in 2016

After the initial jubilation of breaking the ultimate glass ceiling, everything noted above would be true, only worse.  Any cooperation by a Republican with Clinton would end his career ("his" because most Republican elected officials are men), so Capitol Hill would be a white male wall of resistance to any Clinton agenda.  As with Sanders, the Democrats would lose seats in the 2018 midterms, though I think with Clinton as president the losses in legislative seats at all levels would be even worse.  Republicans have hated Clintons for decades, so all the knives would be out.  The only Democrats in the House would be Nancy Pelosi and the Congressional Black Caucus (OK, a little hyperbole, but every moderate Democrat would be in dire danger).    Every congressional committee chairman would find something in the Clinton's past to investigate, going back to her kindergarten finger paintings that MAY have been another child's work.  Again, 2020 would bring in a Republican trifecta that would change America for decades.

3.  Any other Republican elected president in 2016

Say Rubio or Cruz, even Jeb Bush.  First off, the Republicans may have picked up a couple more Senate seats.  A Democrat won New Hampshire's Senate seat by less than 1000 votes in the 2016 election.  New England Republicans are not cut from the same cloth as southern Republicans, and many of the few remaining New England Republicans find Trump repulsive, so it's easy to imagine 1000 more Republicans going to vote and electing a Republican Senator.  Democrats won Nevada's seat  by about 30,000 votes, which seems like a lot, but the state has a large Mormon population and, though Mormons vote overwhelmingly Republican, they were the only conservative Christian group in the US that were true to faith and found Trump revolting, so the Republicans may have won the seat with Mormon voters in Nevada who voted Johnson or didn't vote (Witness MacMullin's success in Utah).  No other Republican president would have nominated Jeff Sessions for Attorney General, so no lost senate seat in Alabama there.  

The attempted repeal of ACA lost because of three senators, Murkowski, Collins, and McCain.  Though McCain stated his reason for voting against the repeal was the flagrant ignoring of committee process, he was fine with the same back room creation of the tax cut a few months later and voted for it with no drama.  He wanted to stiff Trump and the GOP on ACA repeal after Trump insulted his honor as well as his vision of America.  So with a different Republican president, ACA would be no more after the House/Senate conference to reconcile their bills.  

We would have similar tax cuts for the wealthy as well.  In addition, cuts envisioned by Paul Ryan on entitlements would be made possible by the elimination of ACA expenses.  On the bright side, the wars on trade, immigration, and our trusted allies as well as the cozying to autocrats around the world (well, apart from the Saudi Arabian princes: they always get what they want from the US) would probably not have taken place during any other Republican administration.

Republicans would probably have lost some House seats in 2018, as White House incumbent parties almost always lose seats, but not the hemorrhage of the 2018 midterms and the assorted state elections of the last three years thanks to a Democratic Party energized by revulsion to Trump.  They may have retained the House.  Any other Republican would be able to nominate conservative yet competent appointees to the Cabinet and other positions in White House and federal government to carry out much the same agendas of deregulation, environmental pillage, and cutting benefits for the poor, but probably with less chaos and turnover.  (Though no Republican administration for the the past 100 years has been totally free of graft, cronyism, or worse).  

Any other Republican would probably have a good chance of being re-elected in 2020.  He would certainly have better odds than Trump has in November.  So with eight years in the White House, probably with probably four to six years but maybe even eight years of House and Senate control depending on how midterm elections had gone, the laws passed, budget priorities, and judges confirmed would make United States a great place to be white or rich, but not so great for the poor of any race, the state of environmental protections, or the health of our democracy.

4.  Trump elected president in 2016

Well, we've seen what has happened and what hasn't happened.  ACA survives, even with chinks chipped in its structure, and most people have come around to accepting and embracing its basic goals.  Democrats have surged in state races for legislative seats and governor's mansions.  The House has a solid Democratic majority.  Houses of state legislatures have flipped or at least lost some GOP seats.  Democratic governors have been elected, even though their powers have sometimes been reduced by vindictive Republican controlled lame duck legislatures.  Republican senators in many formerly safe seats are in danger thanks to Trump's persistent low approval.  The brand of the Republican Party is soiled with taints of incompetence, political cowardice, as well as blatant racism which is harder to ignore than its more subtle forms in the past.  With Trump's low approval even before Covid-19 struck the Democrats had a good chance of winning the White House as well as more seats in the House and perhaps turning the Senate, even with the preceding pattern of incumbents of the past century being re-elected. His incompetence and insensitivity in dealing with crises of public health crisis and police violence have almost guaranteed his defeat.

A wave of Democratic voting could take away state legislatures from Republicans who have spent their time gerrymandering and passing bathroom laws.  After even a flawed 2020 census, redistricting by legislatures under mixed party control of legislatures and governors mansions may be more reflective of our democracy than those created under Republican trifectas (Yes, Democrats can gerrymander with the same viciousness as Republicans: witness my dear home state of Maryland.  But with less state trifectas between governors and the legislative chambers of either party, fairer districting is possible, perhaps even a move toward non-partisan commissions).  With solid majorities in House and even the Senate, as Republicans defend more seats in the 2022 election than Democrats, even midterm losses in 2022 may leave the Democratic party in control of Congress through 2024.

A popular centrist presidency of Biden-Harris would have a good chance for re-election in 2024 by an ever diversifying electorate relieved of the agonies of the pandemic, the stress of the economic collapse, as Democrats would pass relief and infrastructure bills that Republicans would never pass, and the departure of Donald Trump from the stage of the White House.   Thanks to the loss of moderate Republicans in 2018 and probably again in 2020, the GOP would probably retreat into bitter conservatism that would take several years to sort out and, hopefully, reject for a more inclusive and practical political party to keep the Democrats honest.  (When I wrote this originally in early September, I wrote the following here:  "Best of all, RBG could finally retire, secure that her legacy would be continued by a Democratic appointee."  Alas.)

So in the long term liberals and Americans in general will eventually have done well by Trump's election in 2016, even though many have suffered the past four years.  Much of his actions have been through Executive Order, a governing tool decried by Republicans when Obama used it but silently accepted even as Trump used the power more often than Obama, even when the GOP controlled both houses of Congress and theoretically could have passed legislation other than the Senate confirming Federalist Society flakes to federal courts.  Thus much of his legacy can be simply repealed by his successor, just as he zealously tried to repeal as many actions as possible by Obama.

I have only two caveats to this gloating in the possibility of a liberal future:  Covid-19 and the death and replacement of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Any other president, Republican or Democrat, would likely have responded vigorously in February and March of this year, rather than ignore the threat of the virus or consider it a hoax.  This is not to say tens of thousands would not have died with another president in the White House, nor that the economy and with it millions of unemployed would not have suffered from lockdown measures to retard the virus' spread, but with true leadership in dealing with the virus, rather than the denial, disinformation, and bumbling incompetence of the President and his appointees, perhaps thousands of people may not have died and thousands, perhaps millions, will not have to deal with the long term effects of contracting the disease.  

Replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a conservative will indeed alter the apparent balance on the Supreme Court for decades.  But Republican appointees can be surprises, even though they don't shift left like some of their predecessors like Harry Blackmun and John Paul Stevens.  Chief Justice Roberts sees part of his role is to preserve the reputation of the court as a judicial body rather than a nine-member Star Chamber, so he votes with liberal Justices on issues that could affect the well being of the whole country, such as ACA cases. Associate Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh already vote with liberal justices on some issues, though they usually vote with the conservatives.  And the Supreme Court has usually been more conservative than the nation as a whole, the liberal Warren Court being an aberration in court history.

So, though America has truly suffered more from the pandemic than with other possible Presidents and may be disappointed by more conservative Supreme Court rulings from time to time in years to come, the future is probably brighter for most Americans than it would have been with any other president the last four years.