Will America ever overcome its prejudices and elect a woman as president?

US elections in the media age have bequeathed a host of iconic images, from the JFK-Nixon debate to that red-tinted Barack Obama “hope” poster, through Bill Clinton’s choice of Al Gore rather than a grizzled sage as his running mate and the notorious “hanging chads” of the “tied” 2000 election.

The picture of Donald Trump, his fist defiantly raised in the air after narrowly surviving an attempt on his life, has to be the early favourite for 2024. There is one, no less graphic, image, however, that should have taken its place alongside these, but didn’t.

Hillary Clinton was to have celebrated her victory in the 2016 presidential election at the all-glass Jacob Javits Convention Centre in Manhattan. Described as the “ultimate power move”, the party instead became a wake – and this massive glass edifice came to represent not thesmashing of the last US glass ceiling, but its durability.

Against this cataclysmic disappointment for the Clinton campaign and all it stood for, Kamala Harris’s election as the first female vice-president a mere four years later offered paltry consolation. This was especially so, given the calibre of women who had lost out to then 77-year-old Joe Biden in the primaries.

After Biden and Trump had both secured their nominations for this year’s election in almost record time, the chance of a woman reaching the White House seemed as remote as ever.

With Biden’s reluctant decision to endorse his veep for the Democratic nomination, however, 2024 suddenly became the year that could just open the US top job to a woman, albeit not any of the half dozen or so whose names had hitherto been in the frame.

Chance, it seems, may foster social progress at least as effectively as intent. Barring accidents, or