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By Hugh Cameron

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Donald John Trump:

A man who, as of October, had graced the cover of Time Magazine a record 56 times and twice been anointed its "Person of the Year."

A man the media has labeled "a force of history," the "dominant American of our age," and the "most consequential president of our time."

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A man whose style of campaigning and approach to governance have, both detractors and acolytes will agree, reshaped the American body politic in a manner that may be impossible to fully undo.

But few could have imagined all this when he descended the Trump Tower escalator and announced his candidacy in June of 2015. That is, until November 8 of the following year.

"No dream is too big, no challenge is too great," the president-elect told the election night crowd in New York City. "Nothing we want for our future is beyond our reach. America will no longer settle for anything less than the best.

"We must reclaim our country's destiny and dream big and bold and daring. We have to do that. We're going to dream of things for our country, and beautiful things and successful things once again."

Whether or not the real estate mogul and reality TV star made good on this arguably remains the country’s defining political fault line. Some see it as a promise kept, others as one not yet fulfilled, and others as the inverse—that Trump has since disassembled beyond repair the nation and its political institutions rather than rebuilding these as pledged.

And while it could be said of most political events, this election was itself a fracture for the United States—one decided by fewer than 80,000 votes and one that could have looked very different had Trump not stormed into American politics and took the White House.

Let's take a look at that different post-2016 landscape.

Trump Loses, Clinton Wins

The glass ceiling is shattered, the Javits Convention Center is erupting into cheers, and great swathes of the country are breathing a sigh of relief.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, an individual whose political career has long been defined by her presidential ambitions, has just beaten Trump in the 2016 election and turned her family, like the Kennedys and Bushes before them, into a bona fide political dynasty.

The former first lady and Senator eked out a slim Electoral College victory thanks to a last-minute campaigning push in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, while winning the popular vote by over three million ballots.

For many—pollsters, pundits, the D.C. establishment—this is validation that a single man cannot alter the course of history. But for nearly as many, this is a missed opportunity to show pollsters, pundits, and the D.C. establishment that ignoring swaths of the country has consequences.

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Clinton tells her crowd that she is still awaiting Trump’s concession call. The Republican candidate tells his there will be no call, that the election was a robbery orchestrated by the elites and the media in coordination with his crooked opponent—echoing his campaign allegation of "large-scale voter fraud" and "rigged" polling places.

Without any party or presidential apparatus to employ, however, these claims come to little more than an extended Twitter campaign—as Trump reverts over the next few months and years from a political force to a conservative media personality.

And he would slide back into this role easily, according to Peter Loge, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama and Associate Professor of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University.

"By all accounts, Trump's plan was not to get elected president. It was to create a platform to do something else, like possibly try to build a counter-media empire to monetize conservative anger," Loge told Newsweek. "If that’s the case, he’s now not the only guy doing it. He’s part of a universe that includes Tucker Carlson and others."

Clinton’s White House

Clinton’s first days are as predictable as people—in hindsight—treat her victory over Trump.

Her White House and Cabinet are slowly being staffed with familiar faces from her husband's and former boss’s administrations, with a few additions befitting the historic nature of her presidency. Appointments first rumored, then formalized, include John Podesta as chief of staff, career diplomat William J. Burns as Secretary of State and Michèle Flournoy as Secretary of Defense.

Flournoy was briefly considered for the State Department, but this threshold had already been crossed by Madeleine Albright and Clinton herself, while the Pentagon was still waiting for its first-ever female chief.

The unsurprising group of nominees pass with minor resistance in the Republican-controlled Senate, though Vice President Tim Kaine does at one point cast a deciding vote to get these over the line.

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America Under Clinton

Prior to the election, polling from Pew Research Center revealed what voters saw as the top issues: 84 percent said that the economy was "very important" to them, followed by terrorism (80 percent), foreign policy (75 percent), health care (74 percent) and gun policy (72 percent).

And given how concerningly close the 2016 vote proved, Clinton is determined to at least demonstrate that she is addressing them directly.

As promised on the campaign, Clinton unveils a five-year $275 billion infrastructure investment package, funded through corporate tax increases and an immigration bill. The latter attempts to address some of the concerns that almost defeated her, including tougher controls and reinforced barriers at the Southern Border—though not a wall, Clinton insists—alongside funding for immigration attorneys and the establishment of a White House Office of Immigrant Affairs. Republicans largely push back against these moves, saying they are unsatisfied with the efforts.

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Having led the health care reform effort during her husband’s presidency, Loge tells Newsweek that Clinton would have also "put more emphasis on health and human services, maybe, than President Obama did." This may have comprised safeguards for and an expansion of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Many of these policies come into contact with the harsh reality of Congressional politics. In 2017, Clinton is forced into heavy compromises to ensure her signature tax and jobs bill can pass the Republican-controlled House led by Speaker Paul Ryan and the Republican-controlled Senate led by Mitch McConnell.

The Supreme Court

Despite being asked several times on the campaign trail—thanks to the vacancy left by Antonin Scalia in February 2016—Clinton never revealed her hypothetical pick for late justice’s Supreme Court seat.

But Merrick Garland, already rejected by the Republican Senate who refused to act on his nomination, placed first in the American Bar Association Journal’s unofficial shortlist in 2016.

His renomination is successful the second time around, the court retains its 5-4 centrist majority, federal abortion rights—and Roe v. Wade—remain largely untouched.

Foreign Policy

Foreign policy assumed atypical importance in the run-up to 2016, and both campaigns spoke confidently about how they alone could defeat the Islamic State, quell fears about domestic terrorism and navigate the quagmire that had formed in Middle East following the Syrian civil war.

To varying success and significant opposition, Clinton employed no-fly zones over Syria, substantial financial support and equipment for opposition forces, and an intensive military campaign involving airstrikes and greater cooperation with regional intelligence networks.

Other aspects of Obama’s foreign policy—such as the Iran nuclear agreement—remained intact.

"I think the world would be a very different place. Because Clinton trusts the foreign policy establishment and believes in soft power," said Loge, who also told Newsweek that the "entire relationship with Europe would have looked much different from it does under President Trump."

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Drawn on relationships developed during her time as Secretary of State, Clinton meets frequently with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and often expresses support for a U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), though her relationship with the British foreign secretary and then prime minister, Boris Johnson, is seen by many as fractious thanks to his past comments about the president.

Between 2016 and 2020, Russia remains on a war footing with Ukraine, arming and training pro-Kremlin groups in the eastern part of the country and entrenching its presence in the Donbas and Crimea. Clinton sanctions and approves weapons sales to Ukraine, and supports additional deterrence—troops, air defenses, joint military exercises—in the Baltics.

Her rhetorical support for Kyiv and Article 5 of NATO’s Washington Treaty—concerning collective defense—remains unequivocal.

This reflects her long-held views on Vladimir Putin and her objection to his attempts to "rewrite the boundaries of post-World War II Europe."

COVID, Culture Wars and the 2020 Election

Whatever storms the Clinton White House had to weather for the first three years of her presidency, these pale in comparison to the perfect culture-COVID tempest which formed in 2020.

The pandemic was a "heck of a thing for any president to tackle," according to Loge.

And, like most nations, the U.S. government’s approach is defined by a lack of clarity and successive U-turns on lockdowns, business restrictions and mask mandates.

A health-focused president, Clinton draws on established playbooks like Obama’s National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, and the federal response becomes more coherent even as the message board-fomented theories—linking Clinton, Bill Gates, Jeffrey Epstein and the virus’s other supposed "creators"—become more unhinged.

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Clinton becomes the main target for widespread public fatigue over the pandemic and the government’s approach to it. Meanwhile, the immense fallout from supply chain disruptions and nonconsuming consumers starts eroding much of the success her signature economic policies could still boast.

Extended lockdowns and school closures ignite massive backlash—echoing Tea-Party fervor of the Obama years but with distinct and nastier energy. And if these were not already enough fronts on which to fight, another is opened by the death of a 46-year-old Black man at the hands of a police officer on May 25, 2020.

Clinton’s election and some of her policies had placated and mollified the grassroots left in the U.S. until the murder of George Floyd, which combined with a pandemic-weary public to create a bipartisan cherry bomb that exploded across every major city in the U.S. over the summer.

Both left-wing and right-wing protesters flouted lockdown rules and increasingly gave the impression of a country and an administration in crisis—one Clinton’s political opponents were only too happy to seize.

Clinton runs for reelection against a populist Republican ticket. A clear winner emerges from a heated and Clinton-focused primary that features Mitt Romney, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley and John Kasich.

She loses—an admirably close defeat roundly blamed on the unique struggles Clinton faced in the second half of her term, and the pre-existent need to contend with both history and the fickle habits of the American voter.

"One political party doesn't get four terms in a row. It is very rare that a political party gets three terms in a row," Loge tells Newsweek.

"We went from President Reagan to President Reagan to his Vice President Bush, but that was it. So the idea that we go from Obama to Obama to Clinton to Clinton is really a huge stretch."

2020 to 2024

The further America travels from the antecedent event—Trump’s defeat in 2016—the more speculative any alternative history becomes.

But the years leading up to 2016, those which were witnessed through 2020 and the time has since passed hint at a number of underlying forces that might have shaped the U.S. following Clinton’s turbulent, single-term presidency.

The Democratic coalition searches for a new direction and a new figurehead, even though many of the party’s Top Brass insist there was nothing Clinton could have done to avoid losing the presidency and even more seats in the House and the Senate.

With the Republican Party in charge, a major realignment occurs. Many of the proposed and adopted policies bearing hallmarks of the right-wing fervor which developed during COVID and propelled the party to power.

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The president and the party’s establishment figures use their majorities to push through long-term GOP priorities in Congress. But their domestic agenda of deregulation, tax cuts and border control is not enough to satiate the populist wing, which is barely less angry than under Clinton and had envisioned a more aggressive dismantling of her legacy.

Historians and political analysts come to see these four years as defined by only a handful of events, ones which they say would have occurred regardless of the sitting president: A rushed and messy Afghanistan exit, an unclear response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and runaway inflation sparked by the latter and the post-pandemic demand surge, and America’s support for Israel in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attacks.

To many voters on the left and right, these crises seem to confirm what they have long thought about the inabilities of the D.C. establishment. Switching the party in charge no longer seems sufficient when the country’s populists view it as a one-party state.

There are few political figures who have ever been able to speak to such feelings with any real force.

By 2024, the stage is set for his return.

What Became of Trump and MAGA?

There is no knowing whether Trump would have run again, exercised his capabilities in another arena or retreated to an affluent life of political quietude.

He may have followed in the footsteps of those media power brokers like Rush Limbaugh, using his shows to back candidates who carry the mantle of his old campaign and promise to "make America great again." To his followers, his "Kingmaker" credentials would be unimpeachable, given he is the man who—had it not been for meddling election officials—would have spared the country four years of Clinton.

The desire to stir up crowds may have forced him back into the political fray.

Immediately post-2016, Loge says the Republican Party would have viewed Trump’s loss—and by extension the defeat of his new political style—as validation that the old ways have not yet died, and that your grandaddy’s GOP can still win and govern.

"Candidates obey their incentives just like the rest of us," he told Newsweek.

But as for the emotional core of Trump’s successful campaigns in 2016 and 2020—the MAGA contingent—history suggests this preceded and would have outlived the man himself.

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Arlie Hochschild, author of Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right, told Newsweek that Trump perfectly exhibits her notion of "emotional capture" and that he was able to speak to longstanding feelings of humiliation and a predisposition toward resentment that had for decades been developing in certain American communities.

Trump "captured" this feeling but he did not create it, Hochschild said, and blame lies more with globalization, automation and other forces that have preceded rightward drifts elsewhere in the world.

"Trump didn't invent the anger and resentment," said Loge. "Trump tapped into the anger and resentment."

"The MAGA movement itself might not be called MAGA, but the anger and frustration would have still been there."

Michael Kimmel, SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Sociology and Gender Studies said, "Ten years ago, American men had begun to awaken from their expectations that their lives would look pretty similar to those of their fathers and grandfathers."

Kimmel said that men had come to accept "sometimes grudgingly" greater gender equality at home and at work, but told Newsweek that Trump’s election "ushered in one step forward and two steps back."

However, he told Newsweek, "just as Trumpism will likely not outlive Trump for very long, neither will these setbacks in gender equality prove permanent. It was one long step backwards, but the next step is onward."

Ten Years…

Partly a result of the radical changes he inaugurated, attempting to chart a counterfactual Trumpless history with any accuracy will always be inherently limited.

Historians will acknowledge—those who don’t already—that the man exercised massive influence over American politics since entering it in earnest over a decade ago.

Described by Loge as a "large gravitational force," the wake or afterglow left by Trump once he departs will be seen as far from limited to a single decade.

But as well as the incumbent president and a democratic manifestation of contemporary American feeling, the forces which sustained his political career during this time appear almost eternal.

"We tend to be distrustful of elites. We tend to be fiercely independent and also eternally optimistic and eternally hard-working, like we're one side hustle away from eternal happiness," said Loge. "So I think that would have remained, and that's one of the things I think is pretty special about this country, is that we constantly believe in our ability to constantly reinvent ourselves for the better."

Contact Newsweek editor on this story: Mike Hirst.

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