IF voting made any difference they probably wouldn't let us do it. That is what Mark Twain thought of elections and he had a point - well, half a point anyway.
It would be wrong to suggest that no election has ever made a difference to the lives of ordinary people (although examples are scarce). However, he might have more accurately noted that the gender, race or religion of elected leaders makes little difference to that section of society which they are seen to represent.
Which means that Hillary Clinton's likely election will make no more difference to the lives of ordinary American women than Barack Obama's presidency did for African Americans. The evidence lies not just in America, but in the failure of the African National Congress (ANC) in government to advance the cause of South Africa's black population and can anyone really claim that Catholics here are better off since their political representatives entered government at Stormont?
That is not to suggest that the election to high office of women, blacks or people of a particular religion is not somehow progressive. It usually is - but the progress is often more symbolic than real.
If you disagree (and disagreement is the only way to test an argument) look at how America's blacks have fared under President Obama. The numbers of black people in poverty has marginally increased; median income has fallen; the number on food-stamps has risen from 7 million to 11 million and home ownership has dropped from 46 per cent to 42 per cent.
Black unemployment has eased, but only in line with the decline in unemployment generally, as part of the economic recovery. However, in 2015 black people were killed by police at twice the rate of white, Hispanic and native Americans. Young black men are nine times more likely to be killed by police than any other population group - and police record-keeping is suspect.
The FBI director has said it is "embarrassing and ridiculous" that the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers held better records on police killings than the US authorities. Voting for Obama made little difference to America's black population.
Because South Africa's blacks have had a similar experience under the ANC, they have rebelled. In this year's election, the ANC won only 54 per cent of the votes - the first time that it fell below 60 per cent since apartheid ended. In three of the country's most important cities (including Nelson Mandela Bay, with 28 per cent unemployment) whites and blacks voted together against the ANC.
In the absence of social and economic progress, the ANC has continued apartheid's obsession with racial policies, including compulsory race classification. (Remind you of anywhere?) It has pursued "demographic representivity" where, if 80 per cent of the population is black, 80 per cent of the doctors should be black (sounds like the PSNI) and key jobs and public funds are allocated on race rather than ability (you can make your own comment on that one).
The end of apartheid simply meant the introduction of a new type of inequality. South Africa now has the lowest life expectancy in the world and 63 per cent of its children live in poverty. A black South African government brought little improvement to most South African blacks.
Which brings us to Stormont. Eighteen years after the new power-sharing assembly began, 100,000 children here live in poverty. Despite Catholic parties in government, over 30 per cent of children in west Belfast remain in poverty and Derry and Strabane still have the highest unemployment rates.
Like President Obama, the ANC and Mrs Clinton, the largest Catholic party, Sinn Féin, diverts attention from government's social and economic record by waving the flag for a section of the electorate. This week SF claimed that Stormont is now the natural successor to the Provisional IRA.
(The phrase "losing the run of themselves" does not quite convey the singular absurdity of that claim. It presumably means that Arlene Foster's post is now equivalent to PIRA chief of staff, Simon Hamilton is equivalent to director of supplies and they have yet to appoint a director of intelligence, on the basis that they assume their Catholic electorate does not have any.)
So, using evidence from three continents, we might reasonably argue that Hillary Clinton's election will make no more difference to women than Mrs Thatcher or Angela Merkel did. You see, as Mark Twain might have said, voting women, blacks or Catholics into office makes little difference in the absence of other policies, which is probably why they let us do it.
