It’s just a rumor, but the tweet is that two women went to the homes of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell on Halloween dressed as Hillary Clinton and Kathleen Sebelius. I understand their jack o’lanterns were smashed and McConnell’s trees were toilet papered. Both senators were unavailable for comment.

Antics aside, the noise you hear is the rustling of skirts and stomping of smart boots. Hip people in Washington are reading the tea leaves. The old white guys in the glass towers and the cleated-shoe golfers of both parties know change is coming, but they have no idea how bad it’s going to be.

Imagine Hurricane Sandy in pant suits, Vesuvius in Jimmy Choo shoes. It isn’t going to be pretty. It’s going to be a category five.

I’m going out on a limb now and make my fantasy prediction, even though I probably won’t be around to see the full change of things to come. Although It would be fun to live to see the first female baseball commissioner.

By 2025, the political gender-scape of America and possibly the universe, will be unrecognizable. As we speak, women are beginning to kick down the doors, rip out the glass ceiling and are taking over.

The male political front runners now jockeying for position are about to hit a brick wall and its name is woman.

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President? Some mentioned Maine’s popular Susan Collins, others are chanting for Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and the tea party is scouring the bushes of the deep south to find a replacement for Michelle Bachmann. But Vegas is cleaning up on Hillary Clinton, and this week, a coffee klatch of female Democratic senators sent a letter to Hillary entreating her to run. Look out the window boys, suits and loafers are fading away. Pastels are the new black.

Futurist planners are envisioning a day when women will control the House, the Senate and the Oval Office. Both sides, of course, are hoping it’s their crowd. Even the Tea Party will have a candidate.

Red or blue, the new gang will sit down at breakfasts and teas. Between board and strategy meetings, they will shop together and stage cookouts. After budget agreements, they’ll rush to baby showers. Problems will be solved before the end of the business day. With no male egos smelling up the halls, there will be no petulant shut downs or cliff hangers.

Women don’t like cliff-hangers and Hollywood knows it. They like stuff all wrapped up and tied with a ribbon. They like comity with joy, smiles and weddings, and by 2018 it won’t matter if it’s Tom and Dick or Suzie and Jane. Fathers may fret over a gay son. Mothers just hug them and go about planning the wedding.

The corridors of power and the yellow halls of the west wing will hum with the buzz of straights and gays, Hispanic, Asian, black and (God help us) Irish women. It will be good for business as well. Pant suits will be all the rage and Ralph Lauren and Talbot’s will expand their Asian factories.

The old white-haired, white shoe and Haggar slacks crowd? One by cantankerous one, they will be sent home to play golf, drink their bourbon, snap their suspenders and watch the games of their choice.

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Eventually, in this golden utopian women-dominated America, perhaps planet, men, if they don’t learn to behave, will be subjugated to the roles they have traditionally been best at: throwing and catching balls of all kinds, killing foreign enemies and growing facial hair.

There will always be the Chris Matthews, Bill O’Reillys and Rush Limbaughs loudly positing opinions, but they will not be allowed to interrupt the women they’re interviewing when they’re making their points, and may even, if some Catholic nuns get elected to higher office, be forced to raise their hands before asking condescending questions.

Finally, courtesy, manners and humor will, after decades of absence, be back and will change the face of congress, Wall Street, city halls and state houses country wide.

Yes, there will always be a crazy or two and squabbles will pop up. Women who can’t agree on the color of a new car certainly don’t qualify as a monolithic voting bloc.

It’s Halloween in America, old boys, who is that at the door?

J.P.  Devine is a Waterville writer.


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