The point is that Harris is a heartbeat away from the presidency because of her chromosomes and the fact that her parents were born in India and Jamaica. Plenty of firms and companies across the western world have been engaging in similar practices. Indeed there is hardly a field in which the concept of diversity hires is not now an issue. And again, it makes a certain sense. In increasingly multiracial countries it is awkward to see, for instance, a board that is overwhelmingly or solely white. Take the Guardian Media Group. There is one ethnically diverse person in the mix, but otherwise the eleven-person board of the Guardian is as white as the Canadian prime minister on one of those rare nights when he hasn’t blacked up.

Yet while chromosomes and parentage are something, are they enough to qualify for the second-highest office in the world? This is a question almost no one in the US dared ask. In fact they hardly asked anything. Like Biden, Harris failed to do any traditional campaigning, due to Covid, and that worked in her favor. For the American public didn’t get a chance to see quite how terrible she is on her feet. Harris is the opposite of a motivational speaker. The jollier she pretends to get, the more the crowd searches for the exit signs.