Just a quick little blurb, nothing too heavy. 538.com currently gives about an 83% chance for the Dems to take the House and about a 32% chance for them to take the Senate. The fact that there is a 1 in 3 chance for the Senate is utterly remarkable (about 15 months ago, the prospects were probably 1 in 50). It is impossible to overstate how bad the Senate map is for Democrats (the worst since at least 1913, acc. 538).
So I got to thinking about 2018 if Hillary had squeaked to wins in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in 2016 to become president. We’d obviously be in a markedly better country right now than the one we’re in, with much better judges (though Kennedy may not have retired) and fewer voter suppression laws. But given the high dislike of her (justified and otherwise) in so many pockets of the country, and the motivation Republicans would feel to rebuke her, I can't help but feel that this cycle would be REALLY ugly. And that's not even factoring in Trump's new TV network and its 24-hour coverage of how bad a job she was doing on everything after "stealing the rigged election." I also feel that the Progressive awakening over the last two years would be a shell of itself, as would Democratic enthusiasm for turnout.
So it seems fair to speculate (we can’t know, calm down, this is just speculation) that Corker and Flake probably don't retire, so their seats aren't in play. Sessions remains in Alabama (he isn’t appointed to the cabinet), so his seat isn't in play and isn’t lost to Doug Jones. Cruz, with Trump having lost, is now covered as a presidential front-runner, and a visible critic of Hillary's, so his seat is almost surely safe (rather than “toss-up,” as Real Clear Politics currently has it). This means that the only possible pickup is Heller's seat, but he's probably not in trouble in a neutral-toward-Red year.
Meanwhile, McCaskill is a female Democrat in a Red state defending Hillary's policies. She's gone. Heitcamp, same thing: gone. Nelson, Tester, Donnelly are all probably toast. Manchin might be able to survive, since he's the most popular politician in West Virginia, but it would be a challenge. Casey in Pennsylvania would be in play, as would Sherrod Brown (though he probably survives), as would Baldwin in Wisconsin. Angus King's seat might also be in play in Maine. Al Franken, who DOES still resign in 2017, leaves a seat that's also probably in play. Who knows who Tim Kaine's replacement in Virginia is, but that state is 50/50 at best. Does Hillary do something that seems innocuous like choosing a "safe" state Senator like Cory Booker for her administration? That's probably a mistake if she does. Could we see Republicans (in President Hillary’s world) end 2018 with 57 Senators? Almost a guarantee. 60? Very possible. 63 Senators? A stretch, but there’d be a path.
Meanwhile, we probably don't see dozens of Republicans retiring in the House ahead of the perceived washout they're about to get in (the real) 2018. So taking the House is not only out of play for Democrats, they're probably favored to lose seats. The number one rallying cry they have right now (Stop Trump!) doesn’t exist.
And then in 2020, when Hillary seeks re-election against a supremely-motivated Republican Party and its front-runner of Tom Cotton or Joni Ernst or John Kasich (or Trump again), there's almost no chance for Dems to claw back these Senate losses, because there’s no low-hanging fruit (there are only 2 Blue State Republicans in the 2020 cycle--Gardner and Collins, and Collins doesn’t have to take any key “deciding votes,” so she is probably safe), and they're unlikely to make up the House deficit in a non-wave year. And then 2020 is a census year, which means that if the states stay basically as they are now (let alone the possibility of going even more Red), Republicans get to re-draw another 13 to 15 Democrats out of the House for the next decade. And then the House is gone for the foreseeable future. BTW, even if there were a Blue Wave in 2022, the number of Blue state Republicans (low-hanging fruit) in the 2022 cycle is currently...zero.
In short, for the victory of having Hillary for this term, certain absolute utter nightmares might lay in our path. A Republican Party with the presidency, a filibuster-proof Senate and a strong majority in the House in 2021 would not be an unwarranted prediction. It might actually be favored to happen. The last time Republicans have had anywhere near that kind of power in Washington? 1931, but worse now than then, and with THIS current Republican Party of nihilist White Nationalist maniacs.
So...we didn't dodge a bullet with Trump, we have been riddled with bullets and the bullets keep hitting us. But I'm certainly looking forward to November now, and I'd be abjectly depressed about November in my hypothetical. And I don’t even want to think about the possibility that the main thing we got out of this win was Hillary’s Grand Bargain 2.0 where she cut corporate taxes and cut Entitlements in order to “be the adult in the room who would work together with the Republican majority in Congress.”