It has happened. Two conclusions seem inevitable. First, that we are looking at a second Trump presidency, barring an act of God. Second, that between now and November lie four months of relentless identity politics.

Welcome to the American election 2024, Donald Trump vs Kamala Harris edition. With Joe Biden succumbing this evening to the ravages of age and Covid, he used whatever judgment he had left to nominate Harris as his heir and successor.

History will not view that decision kindly. For one thing, Harris is one of the least popular politicians to have ever occupied a post this senior. As I pointed out three weeks ago, a poll last year granted her the ignominious status of worst vice president this millennium.

In recent weeks, her popularity has bumped along marginally ahead of the Presidents, but still well into double-digit negatives, and about five points behind Donald Trump. Is it any wonder? A quick Google reveals that her stock-in-trade is that most toxic political currency, the gaff. She has quipped bafflingly about coconut trees, clapped along enthusiastically to a song attacking her in Spanish, sung The Wheels On The Bus idiotically to the cameras to a tune that nobody recognised, and repeated her gnomic motto – “what can be unburdened by what has been” – no fewer than 62 times in speeches, providing fodder for an eye-wateringly effective Republican attack ad this month.

On top of this, her record is yet to be tested. Take, for example, her checkered history as a self-proclaimed “progressive” prosecutor. In her 2019 campaign tract, she wrote: “America has a deep and dark history of people using the power of the prosecutor as an instrument of injustice. I know this history well – of innocent men framed, of charges brought against people of colour without sufficient evidence, of prosecutors hiding information that would exonerate defendants, of the disproportionate application of the law.”

Her words were later used to describe her own failings. Her worst moment probably came in 2010, when 600 drug-related cases were voided after her office failed to disclose key information about the mishandling of evidence to defence attorneys. She made things worse later that year by opposing a San Francisco initiative to legalise marijuana – 1,560 people were jailed for marijuana offences during her tenure as attorney general – then later supporting decriminalisation legislation.

Similarly, she opposed the softening of minimum mandatory sentences, but rolled out a criminal justice plan while running for president that proposed ending them.

The list goes on. Harris has also been criticised for her handling of wrongful convictions, resisting DNA testing that may have exonerated suspects and failing to disclose crucial evidence that may have tipped the scales against the accused in sexual abuse cases.

Ironically enough, she was also criticised on race grounds, rejecting demands from civil rights activists to investigate cop shootings in Los Angeles and San Francisco in the wage of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014, resisting legislation that mandated body cameras for all police officers a year later, and prosecuting parents of truanting pupils, despite complaints that this hit poor black people hardest.

All this was some time ago, it is true. But when you’re running for president as a Democrat candidate, this is the sort of record that will be scrutinised by the Republicans and the press, and subsequently the electorate. They will also pick over her attitude towards Israel, which has been hostile to say the least, when 80 per cent of American voters support the Jewish state.

How will she explain the fact that she insisted that the Rafah operation was impossible just weeks before it was successfully carried out by the IDF? How will she explain her blatant Jew-baiting when she demanded an immediate ceasefire, then allowed the longest pause to extend before adding caveats about Israel’s security? To put it another way, Donald Trump will eat her for breakfast.

Before that expected fate becomes a reality, however, we have a carnival of identity politics to look forward to. There were several far more popular and competent candidates than Harris for the position, such as Gavin Newsom, Governor of California, or the Governor of Michigan Gretchen Whitmer, who has the significant modern political advantage of XX chromosomes.

There was also Josh Shapiro, the “openly Jewish” Governor of Pennsylvania, a divided swing state, who is one of the most popular politicians in America, winning praise from even from Republicans after his dignified and compassionate response to the attempted shooting of Trump and the death of firefighter Corey Comperatore.

These figures now must content themselves with a possible vice president slot on the ticket. Why? None of them are well-known amongst the electorate, it is true. But also, none of them is black.

For this is 2024 America, and for the Democrats at least, race matters more than at any point since the civil rights movement. And not in a good way. With pressure mounting on Biden to step down, Harris’s team let it be known that it would be “offensive” if he were to name a white successor, even – it was implied – if that person was of far greater competence than her.

Remove race from the equation, and Harris is a terrible pick for VP. Add it to the mix and she is still a terrible pick, but one that is far more difficult to avoid without igniting a row over identity politics. The Democrat party of today is composed of a sensible wing in mortal combat with a radical fringe, led by the lunatic Alexandira Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow members of the “squad”. If Biden would have allowed his successor to be elected at the upcoming party conference, the radicals would unite with the trade unions and may seize the nomination.

Such a disaster is likely avoided by the appointment of Kamala Harris. But who will she choose for her running-mate? Someone from the moderate, Biden tradition or a sacred cow from the radical Left?

Frankly, at this point it doesn’t matter at all. Biden has screwed America. Arise, President Trump, and God help us.