In a move that surely refutes the butterfly effect in some way, this week Ted Cruz announced former Hewlett-Packer CEO and no-longer Republican-nominee-aspirant Carly Fiorina as his running mate, and absolutely nothing happened. Not a thing changed. Anywhere. Not in the slightest degree. Even miles away, everything remained exactly the same.
Mr. Cruz's speech made no difference to anyone or anything, any place in the world. Literally, clocks only moved begrudgingly after he was done.
When the presidential, let's not say "hopeful," let's say "optimist," no, let's go with "wishful thinker" had said his piece, the entire world glanced up at the news of the mathematically eliminated candidate's vice-presidential pick and said, "Why …?" In every language, they said it, together.
"Pourquoi?" said the French.
"Por qué?"added the Spanish.
Many people said, "That's great? You got a mathematically-just-not-going-to-happen cabinet to tell us about too, Ted?"
The words "Who cares, Ted?" echoed round the globe.
Nice try, world hunger, but in the end it was a non-cause that united us.
"Will you be answering any other questions literally no one asked, Ted?" the world said in unison, standing together in what was almost a sappy Coke commercial of utter indifference. "Will you be explaining that, after 'a great deal of consideration and prayer,' you've imagined what a dead sloth smells like, and be giving us a briefing, at your next presser, Ted?"
"I'd like to teach the world how the Republican presidential-primary process works and you're just confusing everyone, Ted …" rang out across the hills.
Mr. Cruz sure didn't capture the news cycle with that one, which, with Donald Trump's wins in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island the night before, was clearly the intent of the announcement. No, the news cycle remained free. It may have never been so free. Why, that news cycle capered off across the veldt like Elsa the Lioness set loose.
Elsa will not look back.
It looks very much as if Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. Why? Because "But he's not a politician!" is the cry. That's the reason given over and over for supporting Mr. Trump.
"Enough of these career airline pilots," say Republican primary voters, "always wanting to fly planes; here's a fellow with a box cutter!"
Although the odds of him actually winning are very low. Among other demographic problems, Donald Trump has a 70-per-cent unfavourability rating with women – who make up just over half the voting population – and he clearly wakes up every day trying to make the other 30 per cent hate him as well.
I can't help thinking that, if Donald Trump could scurry across the country and personally leave every toilet seat in America up, he would.
This week he tried yet again to cut loose those women who stubbornly refused to be put off by his "blood coming out of her wherever" remark about Fox News pundit Megyn Kelly. Few women appreciate "You menstruate!" being used as a pejorative, when it's something many of us high-five about. (This somewhat tiresome ritual celebration is what makes us take so long in the bathroom.)
One day I want to see a woman, in a tight race with a man, run under the slogan "If it bleeds, it leads."
Mr. Trump seems to be trying hard to ditch the diehard women fans who were unfazed by his sexual objectification of his older daughter, Ivanka Trump, of whom he said, "And what a beauty, that one. If I weren't happily married and, ya know, her father …"
This is a remark eclipsed in creepiness only by his musings about his younger daughter, Tiffany, of whom he said, when she was a newborn, "Well, I think that she's got a lot of Marla. She's a really beautiful baby, and she's, uh, she's got Marla's legs. We don't know whether or not she's got this part yet," and here he mimed bosoms.
Yes, that's right, those stalwart Trump supporters who were not put off by the thought of electing a vaguely incestuous Marcel Marceau to the highest office in the land were given yet more unpalatable food for thought this week. Those who were sanguine about Mr. Trump's irrepressible drive to let you know exactly how hot he finds every woman he encounters – personally, politically or paternally – were, on Wednesday, offered yet another reason to jump off the S.S. Skeevy as it pulls out of the primaries and into, apparently, the general election.
"The only card she has is the woman's card; she's got nothing else going," he said of the Yale Law School graduate, former first lady, senator and secretary of state who is predicted to be the Democratic nominee. "Frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don't think she'd get 5 per cent of the vote. … The beautiful thing is women don't like her, okay, and look how well I did with women tonight!"
First of all, pro tip, men: Never, in any context, say "Look how well I did with women tonight!" This pronouncement, gentleman, is likely to go over as well as any sentence that begins, "You know, I'm not really a fan, but I once karaoked Say My Name at the golf club and I have some thoughts about Beyoncé's Lemonade I think you're really going to want to hear …"
And never mention the "woman card."
Right, left, in the middle, most women know that the "woman card" is less useful than a Blockbuster card covered in bees and on fire. Most of us get an automatic reduction on our salary just for showing it, and endless free inspections from total strangers even when we try not to flash it, and, although things are improving, a lot of establishments still don't accept it.
That card gets punched a lot – and it's not a black coffee you get at the end of it. I'm not saying the "woman card" is never used, but when it is, it's seldom coming from a woman's hand (we know the game too well) and it's very rarely a winning play when it happens. Looking at you, John McCain.
Men in politics devote a lot of speech time to portraying themselves as just regular guys who sit around the kitchen table hammering out the family budget; they lay that kitchen table on pretty thick, their point being "I identify with you, undecided voter, in that I assume we both have some sort of furnishings in the room in which food is prepared."
That same politician won't be accused of playing the "man card" because, when, in an effort to connect with other people with similar experience, a white, straight man uses his experience as a white, straight man, it's just politics.
When someone who isn't white, or straight, or a man does the same thing with their life experience, it's identity politics. This is why most women learn pretty early in life not to play the hand they're dealt.