Bernie’s playing sports arenas, with Public Enemy as a warm-up act. Trump’s army camp outside the convention centres he’s playing. There we were on a Monday evening, in the Harbour Palace Seafood Restaurant, listening to a dignitary from the local Asian-American community warm up for … Joe Biden. Outside, the crowd who can’t get in are taking selfies with a big Biden display, signing up for a photo with the man himself, when he gets here. Inside, the warm up acts.

‘You know my husband built a multi-million dollar company’ said the small neat woman, standing in a cleared circle, furniture pushed back to create some sort of speaking area. The place looks like every new-built banquet Chinese restaurant, big round fake stone-top tables, knock-off black single stroke paintings, gold huge Hitler-saluting cat. People are crammed in to every corner and spare space, looking at the forty or so seated with undisguised envy and hatred. ‘We didn’t expect anything like this’, a BID–N-sweatshirted chubby young too-honest Biden volunteer had said outside, as she worked the long line, signing up precinct captains. Sure, sure. It’s an old trick to book a too-small venue, get people listening intently to a speaker outside. But they hadn’t even moved all the tables out, which suggests their expectations were very very modest indeed.