When it comes to tax, Trump is offering a classic supply-side Hail Mary pass. Cruz’s more intriguing proposal includes a ten per cent flat rate income tax, the elimination of payroll taxes and the introduction of a federal consumption tax, previously a taboo on Left and Right. Needless to say, it will come under heavy fire, as regressive (despite a big jump in the tax threshold) and (thanks to its early cost) either fiscally irresponsible or a harbinger of savage spending cuts to come.

Healthcare could be another area of vulnerability. Like Trump, Cruz has promised to repeal Obamacare: his worthy, but less than comprehensive alternative (details available on the back of an envelope near you) represents a failure to recognise that uprooting Obamacare is — particularly in an age of insecurity — far more perilous politically than opposing it before it was introduced. And it has to be said that Cruz may not flourish under the Klieg lights: he’s no star on the podium. Then again, look at how far he’s come. In the course of interviewing Cruz on his TV show, comedian Jimmy Kimmel commented how the senator had “kind of held out until they found someone that they liked less than you”. Cruz, smiling and quick, replied: “There you go. It’s a powerful strategy."

Which brings me to Hillary Clinton, a candidate rarely described as likeable. Despite the shadow cast by those troublesome emails, and the hint of the Dalek about her oratory, there has long — with the exception of a brief Biden boomlet — been a dreary inevitability about her path to the Democratic nomination. She has the money, the name recognition and the ability to play the identity card — first woman president! She has held both senior elected and executive office — senator and Secretary of State — albeit with little positive to show for either.  Above all, she basks in the afterglow of her husband’s presidency, remembered by many Americans as the last good time.

In terms of policy, she would, for the most part, represent a continuation of the Obama administration, another grim turn of the ratchet to the left. So far as foreign policy is concerned, she would be less passive than Obama — low bar — but would be less of a hawk than is fondly imagined. Still, unlike Trump, but like Cruz and, for that matter, even her upstart challenger Bernie Sanders, she is a supporter of Nato, so there’s that.

When it comes to free trade, a tricky topic in the current economic climate, especially for Democrats, and particularly for the wife of the President who pushed Nafta through, the omens are not encouraging. Clinton has already withdrawn her support for Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an agreement she helped put together: Sanders has consequences. As for the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the EU, well, don’t hold your breath.

The prospects for future free-trade agreements under a Cruz administration don’t look good either. Cruz remains a supporter of free trade “as a general matter” (that’s probably true), but not, he says, of the specifics of the TPP, and, I reckon, the same would turn out to be no less conveniently true for the TTIP as well. Trump has consequences too. The uncomfortable truth is that America’s contribution to the advance of free trade is stalled, and it’s likely to remain stalled until voters can be persuaded that it’s not destroying their livelihoods. With digital automation increasing the pressure on the job market still further, that might take a while.