“America, we are not going back,” Harris says. By contrast, Trump’s most cherished slogan, Make America Great Again, is a statement of nostalgic nationalism. This framing is crucial to understanding this election. Trump is more of a bulwark against what is coming over the horizon. Much of Harris’s support comes from voters who see themselves either as victims of America’s past – many of them people of colour – or who believe the country should make amends for its historical sins. Much of Trump’s support comes from voters who see themselves as casualties of America’s future – a more multi-ethnic, secular and “woke” nation.

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Though the norm-busting and rule-breaking of Trump’s four years in office explain much of his appeal for the MAGA base, his authoritarian tendencies remain off-putting for many wavering Republicans. Trump 1.0 could yet bar him from a Trump 2.0.

Harris, meanwhile, has been hamstrung by the mis-steps of Joe Biden’s administration, especially on immigration, and also, in these final days, by his mis-speaking. The elderly president’s latest jumble of words, which created the sense he was describing Trump supporters as “garbage”, was a gross act of political malpractice at a time when the Harris campaign wanted him hidden from view.

Yet there is also a legacy from Barack Obama’s presidency that puts obstacles in her way. Many black and left-wing thinkers were angry that the country’s first African-American president did not sufficiently champion their cause. A “monument to moderation” is how the influential writer Ta-Nehisi Coates described his presidency. That sense of frustration contributed to the creation of the Black Lives Matter movement, which had the collateral effect of drawing the Democratic Party further to the left on questions of race, gender identity and policing. Biden, partly as a result of this trend and partly to demonstrate his reformist credentials, has pursued a more progressive presidency than his former boss. That has made the Democrats more vulnerable to the charge of wokeism and radicalism, a criticism that resonates so strongly, especially among men.

What makes this contest additionally troubling is that one of the most climactic elections in US history is also one of the closest. In a country where political violence has been so recurring, that is a combustible combination.

Nick Bryant, a former BBC Washington correspondent, is the author of The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict with Itself.