In a way, Sherry's death made most of the events in the later days possible

Thinking about it, David Palmer drops out of his race for reelection because Sherry is killed. This made the events in days 4, 5, 6, and 7 possible. If Sherry isn't killed, Palmer keeps running and presumably wins. This means Keeler never becomes president, which means Logan never becomes president. Which means the conspiracy in day 5, and and 6 and 7, would have been much harder to make happen since the villains wouldn't have had a president on their side.

Palmer also would have handled day 4 differently. He wouldn't have ordered Jack arrested for torturing a suspect, and they would have captured Marwan before Jack had to raid the Chinese building. So Jack never gets in trouble with China. And even if Palmer died like Keeler did, his VP takes over, who also probably doesn't make the dumb decisions Logan did.

Just kind of interesting. That one event, Sherry getting killed, really was a springboard for all the other events, because Palmer wasn't in office for them.