Yes, you could. Also, most lisp/clojure editing modes will have commands for manipulating S-expressions, such as slurp and barf, which make it a single shortcut

Yes, you could. Also, most lisp/clojure editing modes will have commands for manipulating S-expressions, such as slurp and barf, which make it a single shortcut to move `thing` out of the `if` expression in your example.