It's worth thinking about how much lower long-term federal spending would be had Hillary Clinton won in 2016 instead of Trump. 1/x nytimes.com/2021/05/27/bus… 
Had Clinton won in 2016, GOP would have surely kept House in 2018. Coronavirus would have been dealt with much more effectively in December 2019-January 2020 than under the inept Trump. Much, much less money would then have been needed for COVID relief. 2/x
Facing a Democratic president in 2017-2021, congressional GOP would have continued to demand lower spending, smaller deficits. 3/x
The GOP would have campaigned in 2020 on its traditional budgetary themes. It probably would have won too: Not since the year of D-Day has a party won four consecutive terms in the White House. 4/x
So here we'd be in 2021, on the other side of a much less deadly and costly COVID pandemic. The GOP would now hold presidency, at least one house of Congress - and would believe it owed success to budget message. Very different trajectory for federal spending in the 2020s. 5/x
True, the GOP's big donors would have missed out on their 2017 tax cut (or most of it) under a Clinton presidency. But they'd have extracted something after the GOP congressional gains likely in 2018. And here in our timeline, that 2017 tax cut is looking tenuous. 6/x
Republicans who plighted their troth to Trump might want to contemplate how much he really cost them. On the other hand, the post-Trump doesn't care much about spending and deficits - so maybe they no longer regard Trump's costs as minuses. END
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