If Hillary Clinton Had Won
Greetings, citizens of Earth 1! I’m filing this dispatch from Earth 2, where Hillary Clinton got just a few more votes last November than she did in your world. And I really do mean just a few more: On Earth 2, Clinton won 0.5 percent more of the vote in each state, and Donald Trump won 0.5 percent less. That was just enough for her to narrowly win three states — Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan — that she narrowly lost in what you think of as “the real world.” Races for Congress turned out exactly the same here on Earth 2, so Clinton is president with a Republican Congress.
Things are really different on Earth 2! Merrick Garland is on the Supreme Court instead of Neil Gorsuch. Clinton didn’t enact a “travel ban.” The United States didn’t withdraw from the Paris climate accord. Kellyanne Conway has a CNN show.
OK, maybe things aren’t that different. This is Earth 2, not Earth 5, where Clinton won in a landslide, or Earth 4044, where Jim Gilmore is president (it’s a cold and dark place, and I wouldn’t advise visiting). Earth 2 preserves about as many of Earth 1’s features as possible, other than the things that just can’t be the same because you have Trump as your president and we have Clinton as ours.
But don’t think of this as science fiction. There are a lot of things that you, citizen of Earth 1, can probably infer about what life is like over here. Clinton’s first term has a lot in common with Barack Obama’s second term, for example. And the "laws" of political science — subject as they are to being broken now and again — are still largely intact. The president’s party usually suffers at the midterms here on Earth 2, for example, just as it does on Earth 1.
A couple more things: I know the whole multiverse thing might seem uncomfortable, so I’ve provided some annotations that help to situate my report in your Earth 1 experience. And because of the website you’re reading, I’ve focused more on politics than policy — although there’s a mix of both. As your president would say: Enjoy!