What if? - Hilary won

First woman as President.  Hooray

Trump's unexpected win consolidated the left and fractured the right.  I think a Clinton win in 2016 would have reversed this dynamic.  Certainly the intellectual and moral core of the Republican party would have remained Republican- people like Tom Ridge, George Will, Colin Powell, Richard Armitage, Peggy Noonan, MItt Romney, Peggy Noonan, Steve Schmidt, Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina would have voted Republican in 2018 and 2020.  Combined with Clinton's lack of charisma and political baggage, I think Republicans would have retained the house in 2018 and would have been better positioned for 2020.  I see Ted Cruz as likeliest 2020 challenger with at least as good a chance of winning as Biden.

Well, she would have been the kind of President America is supposed to want- smart, moderate, well-versed on the issues, decisive, willing to take risks but I doubt she would have ever achieved better than 50% popularity and I very much doubt she would gotten much accomplished in terms of policy.  The 3 or 4 Supreme Court appointments would have been the major ideological battles.  Mostly, I think it would have been a lot of gridlock, which is not necessarily bad. 

The left-wing never got behind Obamacare until Trump's win.  I think Obamacare would have been far more vulnerable with almost no opportunity to recast the legislation.

Let's recall that Wall St. predicted in 2016 that Clinton's first term would have resulted in lackluster growth and $2.2 trillion more in public debt by 2026 while Trump's policies would result in a two year recession beginning in '20 and $11 trillion more in public debt by 2026.  We've certainly seen 4 quarters of recession now and the latest omnibus put Trump's overspending beyond $10 million- probably more like $15-16 trillion by 2026.  That is, by 2026, Trump's single term will have proved responsible for about half of all outstanding US debt with almost no public benefit to show for it.

I'm confident that a Clinton administration would have handled the coronavirus better if only because she would have very likely followed the advice offered by the Obama administration's pandemic playbook, the CDC and economic advisors.  I don't know if Clinton would have  blocked all travel from China by Jan 20 (Trump only blocked foreign nationals on Jan 20 preventing only 20% of travel from China) but she would have very likely halted all travel from Europe before Feb 20, which retrospective analysis suggests would have prevented the spike in New York last April.  While I assume we would still be seeing the worst of the pandemic right now, Boston University projections suggest  that if Clinton had followed the conventional health and economic advice we'd be dealing with perhaps 15 million fewer infected Americans and about 220,000 fewer deaths at this point.  Chances are more resources would have been more targeted to individuals in the bottom half or third of the economy (the only force keeping any Western economy going at this point), improving unemployment and small business failure stats and therefore improving recession recovery time.  Nevertheless, I expect Clinton's better pandemic performance would have been far more disapproved since both the left and the right would have howled over those 100,000 dead, making Democrats 2020 chances that much slimmer.

In 20 or 30 years, when historians start to record when China's ascendancy started in earnest, Trump's spectacular destruction of US soft power globally will be seen as a primary factor.  Certainly, I think Clinton would have tried hard to resubmit TPP in some new guise, the geopolitical point of that partnership was effectively to create an economic cordon around China.  I think most experts agree that Xi would never have declared himself President for Life or blown up Hong Kong's special status under any prior president's foreign policy.

In the Middle East,  a Clinton administration would have preserved the Iran deal and probably prevented bin Salman's 2017 coup- improving the balance of power but probably making a Sunni-Shiite showdown more likely.  I certainly doubt that Israel would be enjoying these new Muslim relationships which Kushner has forged.  I imagine our relationship with Turkey would be much, much colder now.  Jamal Khashoggi would certainly still be alive today if Clinton had been president.

Obviously, our relationships in the EU would much stronger than today, with the possible exception of the UK (which is strong enough to weather a lot of disagreement).

Russia would be far more isolated and poorer under Clinton with some real chance of escalation and conflict.  I don't find it hard to imagine that a Cold War Hawk like Hillary would have made some ultimatums over 2016 Election hacking, the War in Ukraine, sponsoring terrorism, bounties on US soldiers, etc.  If Russian funds had remained on lockdown, we would have seen far less money flowing to the ultra-right nationalists in Europe over the past four years- very likely changing the outcome of elections in Poland and the Ukraine.

I am guessing that both immigration and illegal immigration would have increased during a Clinton presidency, with far fewer detentions and prosecutions and to the general benefit of the US economy.