A year has passed since Joe Biden launched, to some derision, his third bid for the White House. Misgivings about the former vice-president encompassed his age, record of gaffes and unwelcome tactility with women. For the left, his compromises during decades in the Senate marked him out as a Democrat in name only.

It turns out that verbal howlers matter less when the president is Donald Trump — and that liberal purists do not speak for the Democratic grassroots. Mr Biden is not just the party’s presumptive nominee. With Bernie Sanders bowing out, he has won that mantle at something of a canter.

The problem is getting Americans to notice. The coronavirus pandemic has tested Mr Trump, and found him direly wanting. But it has also given him announcements to make and press conferences to dominate. In the face of all this “earned media” for the president, Mr Biden has to fight for attention. Six months from the election, he is an almost spectral presence in the US: fleetingly visible, but then relegated once more to the shadows.