The first female president of the United States might not be who you’d expect

The United States may soon have its first female president. And it may not be Hillary Clinton.

Over the past few weeks, the best answer to the question of who will emerge as the Republican presidential nominee — businessman Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), Ohio Gov. John Kasich, some other failed 2016 contender or even House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) — has become “none of the above.” In each instance, the case for why any one of these candidates probably won’t be picked has gotten much stronger than the one for why each of the individual candidates would.

Despite Trump’s big victories this week, he’s not the “presumptive nominee” he claims to be. He faces much tougher challenges in Indiana and California, where poor showings would likely leave him short of the 1,237 delegates needed to end the upcoming Republican convention chaos with a victory in the first round of voting. Despised and feared by the Republican establishment, Trump almost certainly will do worse with each passing round. A stone’s throw is probably as close as he’ll ever get to the nomination.