It’s November 6, 2024, the morning after election day. The people in the Trump campaign should be counting their lucky stars for Donald Trump’s close victory, given the political incompetence they showed in July and August. In the six weeks between July 21, when Joe Biden dropped out, and Labour Day, they had one job: to define Kamala Harris as an elite San Francisco liberal before she could define herself as a middle-class moderate. The Trump campaign did next to nothing. All they needed was to play the 2019 clips of Harris sounding like a wokester cliche, but they couldn’t even come up with an argument, let alone act on it. Harris brilliantly defined herself in that vacuum.

This mistake could have been fatal for the Republicans because Trump is the 46 per cent man. That’s roughly the share of the popular vote he won in 2016 and 2020. He was never going to ride a majority wave to victory in 2024, so it would have been helpful to take his opponent down a few points.