Elections matter, perhaps more because of who comes with the winner than because of who wins. The remade judiciary is the most obvious example from the last four years, with 234 judges appointed to the bench. 

But there’s also the thousands of people leading and staffing government agencies. Perhaps the most dramatic shift made in the Trump years happened at the Department of Health and Human Services. Under President Obama, HHS targeted religious freedom (think of the HHS mandate and the Little Sisters of the Poor), advanced a radical views on sexuality in the classroom and abroad, (the infamous letter on transgendered students and school bathrooms), and promoted abortion and abortion providers (funding abortion overseas).

Trump officials in HHS spent a good bit of the last four years undoing all that, and just last week issued a proposed rule to ensure hospitals to provide life-saving care to infants born alive. 

Of course, the Biden Administration is promising to “undo” what it perceives as “the damage” done by Trump to reproductive rights.

Yes, elections matter.