Imagine a world in which Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election. When COVID-19 hit the US, she was prepared to smack it down hard. There was a non-disbanded pandemic team, there were PPE stockpiles, there were trained contact tracers ready to roll. The initial outbreak was largely confined to the coasts, with slower spread and lower caseloads in the months that followed. But remember in March when they warned us about effective public health measures? I can't remember the quote exactly, but it was something like "when public health measures do what they were supposed to do, people think they were overkill."
Our alternate-universe Hillary Clinton saw her always-fragile popularity tank across the spring and summer. "She's destroying our economy for a virus that's not even that bad!" people grumbled. "We would never have been like Italy. All that hype about overwhelming the healthcare system was just scare tactics!" The Republican candidates campaigned on restoring normalcy, protecting freedom, preserving economic stability. Clinton lost big in November.
Who is our president-elect in that alternate universe?
Recent Comments