It’s late 2021, and President Sanders is getting frustrated. He won a crushing victory in 2020, but the “revolution” is bottled up in the Senate, stopped by the filibuster. Mitch McConnell won’t agree to abolish the filibuster, of course, but neither will Chuck Schumer or most of the Democratic leadership in the Senate. The reason: they can foresee a time when the GOP regains control of every branch of the federal government, and they worry about what the end of the filibuster would mean for the welfare state, and even for abortion rights.
Sanders and his “revolutionaries” go behind the leadership of both parties and make a deal with the extreme right wing of the GOP. In exchange for the abolition of the filibuster, Sanders agrees to appoint Supreme Court justices who will acquiesce to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Both the left and the right deliver on their promises; the “revolution” becomes law, and Roe is overturned.
A few years later, after the GOP returns to power, the new Congress is able to reduce the welfare state dramatically, to repeal all of the “revolution,” and even to approve legislation banning abortion throughout the country.
Implausible? Yes. Impossible? No. If Sanders really wants to move the “revolution” through the system, he is somehow going to have to conjure a way to get 60 votes for social democracy in the Senate, or he’s going to have to make some sort of a deal like this.