At the end of all this hullabaloo America will have another Clinton in the White House and "The Donald" will crawl back to his penthouse in Trump Tower to lick his wounds. Make America Great Again hats will soon be retro souvenirs on eBay and the Republican Party will look back on 2016 as the year it went collectively, but only temporarily, bonkers.

The bookmakers certainly think that's how it will play out. They have Mrs Clinton as odds-on favorite. So do the pollsters - they put Mrs Clinton seven percentage points ahead, which would mean a runaway victory. But not so fast. This race hasn't actually started yet, and when it does things are likely to change dramatically.

Over the course of about five months Mrs Clinton is going to be subjected to the kind of sustained attack no presidential candidate has ever had to endure.

The Democratic primary race has been, on the whole, civilised. Bernie Sanders declined to criticise Mrs Clinton over the scandal of her using a private server for emails when she was Secretary of State. In 2008, Barack Obama was less charitable when he ran against her, but there was still respect.