It also reinforces the fact that at its core, this was an election in which most of the country was broadly unhappy with the course it was on and wanted change.

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Harris had framed herself as the agent of that change, but as part of Biden’s administration of the past four years, many Americans simply didn’t buy it.

One of her most damaging moments was when she was asked on the talk show, The View, whether she would have done something differently than Biden over the past four years.

“There is not a thing that comes to mind,” she replied, handing Trump one of his most effective attack ads.

The vice president is yet to concede defeat, but Trump’s performance was enough to trigger Democrats still traumatised from 2016, when another woman, Hillary Clinton, unexpectedly lost.

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Many of those Democrats had gathered at Howard University, Harris’ alma mater, to see what they hoped would be the first woman ushered into the Oval Office. But as a chill hit the air in Washington, so too did the tension.

When Richmond came out to inform the crowd they wouldn’t hear from their candidate immediately, what began as a celebration on the college lawn turned into an anxious wait.

“We will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken,” Richmond assured them.

It’s an extraordinary comeback for Trump. After all, here’s a man who has been convicted of falsifying business records, encouraged an attempted coup in the US Capitol, uses increasingly fascist rhetoric, and still denies the results of the 2020 election, getting a second chance at power.

For much of the campaign, Trump conveyed a bleak message of racism, misogyny, grievance and fear. But clearly America is a country willing to elect someone who upends norms because they are deeply unhappy with the status quo.

When he asked at his rallies the question: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” The answer, for many, was a categorical no.

This was always going to be a challenging campaign for Harris. She entered the race about 100 days ago, whereas Trump has been running since 2015. She faced ongoing anger over the war in Gaza, flip-flopped on policy and struggled to differentiate herself from Biden, unable to find the balance between loyalty and necessary distance.

But Harris also ran an incredibly expansive get-out-the-vote effort. Indeed in one week alone, the campaign logged 600,000 door-knocks and made 3 million phone calls. She built a coalition that stretched from independent Senator Bernie Sanders on the left to Republicans Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney on the right.

And her potent message about abortion resonated with millions of American women – many of whom now fear for their reproductive health.

However, in the end it wasn’t enough. The highest, hardest glass ceiling that Hillary Clinton failed to smash remains unbroken.

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