Doctor MemoryBrilliant system we've got here. A racist game show host flukes his way into the presidency by losing the popular vote by three million and so he gets to install three Supreme Court justices and they get to un-do the last 50 years of legislation and jurisprudence. Wow, such popular mandate, very democracy.
Of the many, many depressing counterfactuals from my lifetime watching and being subject to american politics that I sometimes contemplate while drinking heavily, the world where Thurgood Marshall managed to hold on for 18 more months and have his successor appointed by Bill Clinton is one of the most agonizing to realize we missed by inches.
(In fairness to Marshall himself, this was not at _all_ an obvious or even plausible scenario in October 1991.)