Imagine, for example, an Obama presidency where Democrats maintained control of the House and the Senate, which would have saved thousands of state legislative seats—thus protecting the Supreme Court at the federal level and forestalling the current assaults on reproductive rights generated by recalcitrant states. Immigration reform, climate action, and the progressive agenda would have still generated rancor and division, but the fights would have focused on scale rather than existential questions about who we are.
Would it, really?
