BEFORE every major election campaign bite-sized narratives emerge that define the contest. It’s often difficult to pin them down by authorship or to establish veracity. If they are pithy enough and sufficiently wise-sounding they will frame every television interview and inform political discussions. Smart people who are supposed to know what they are talking about will drop them into their analyses on late-night television. They will rarely be asked to explain why they hold this account to be true because, well, everyone accepts it is so, don’t they?

During the independence referendum everyone seemed to accept that the campaign had been contaminated by the ugly behaviour of Nationalist extremists. No matter that Police Scotland has concluded that the campaign was conducted in a good atmosphere and that, of the few instances of criminally offensive behaviour, not one was committed by a Nationalist. During each of Margaret Thatcher’s UK election victories it was accepted that she had a tough grip on the economy and that she would ensure that everyone took their medicine so that Britain could get better. That she was only able to do so by selling off national institutions and utilities and using vast North Sea oil receipts to wage war against the miners before paying them off was overlooked. That she enriched a splinter of society and ensured their continuing financial support in exchange for weakening the trade unions was also ignored.

The election of the 45th president of the United States has produced a stalwart example of the oeuvre: these are the worst two presidential candidates ever. There is a subsidiary narrative: in any other presidential campaign Hillary Clinton would be out of the running.

But there is a sense that, while Donald Trump is a dangerously unhinged misogynistic and racist clown, Mrs Clinton simply can’t be trusted. If Mr Trump is still running her close a few days before the election there must be something seriously wrong with her. It is the means by which the American Right has sought to bring a proper stateswoman down to the level of their man.

Mr Trump was always going to be a formidable opponent for Mrs Clinton. You don’t defeat a dozen or so of the cream of Republican politics, humiliating most in the process, if you haven’t got something going for you. Just what this was will occupy historians and political analysts for decades. Their findings will be similar to those explaining why England and Wales voted to leave the EU. This was less an endorsement of Brexit’s more scrofulous principles than a howl of protest by a large section of the electorate at having been ignored or taken for granted. For blue-collar America read flat-cap Hartlepool.

It’s curious, too, how Mr Trump is regarded as some sort of rogue, once-in-a-millennium Republican who doesn’t represent civilised America. He is, though, the incarnation of what America has become: the inevitable outcome of decades of invading small countries; backing fascist death squads; torturing detainees in Guantanamo without trial; and inducing client countries to look the other way when using their airspace to violate the human rights of those held without trial. This is a deeply uncivilised country governed by the gun and driven by a hillbilly delusion that might is always right. It made Mr Trump.

The demonisation of Mrs Clinton has been one of the most chilling aspects of this election; much more so than the pantomime antics of her opponent. This, though, is part of something much bigger and much more sinister. This woman has spent most of her adult life knowing that a malevolent, far-right coalition of political opportunists, multi-billionaire industrialists and the scarecrow faction of fundamentalist Christianity are seeking to destroy her. Yet she has served her country with distinction and conducted herself with grace and dignity when confronted with deep personal humiliation.

She’s been here before. The nomination in 1996 of special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, a known Republican fundamentalist and friend of Big Tobacco, to investigate the Clintons’ dealings in Whitewater was bizarre. Before long it was clear that Mr Starr was merely the tip of a well-financed and sophisticated conspiracy to destroy her and her family. During this time she had been accused of murder, fraud on a grand scale and using her charity to enrich her and her husband and to reward corporate donors with political favours. As she edges tantalisingly closer to the White House, the conspirators’ efforts have grown more frenzied.

In this presidential race it seems that the mis-location of government-encrypted emails is more worthy of police attention than the accusations of serious sexual assault on a grand scale. Even as Mr Trump was failing to pay contractors, consorting with gangsters and harbouring opinions of women last seen during the Robin Hood era, his opponent was using her new position as First Lady in 1994 to advance the cause of women’s and children’s rights.

Her attempts to introduce a compassionate system of universal healthcare for America’s poorest citizens was undone by a tribal republican backlash that viewed free access to medicine in the same way as gun control. She refused to be discouraged and her endorsement of a children’s health insurance programme covers more than seven million children from poor backgrounds. The gun lobby hates her because she wants tighter checks on gun sales and gun buyers and, for that reason alone, she deserves to be in the White House.

Only when Barack Obama arrived there did the attack dogs of the American Right cease their onslaught on Mrs Clinton, but only momentarily. They were emboldened to smear Mr Obama in the most grotesque fashion. They denigrated their President in the vilest ways imaginable: by questioning his birth, lineage, loyalty and faith.

Soon Mrs Clinton was in their sights once more. According to the Washington Post, the extraordinary FBI intervention hints at a group of rogue agents running loose inside the bureau linked to a pro-Trump organisation and pledged to bring down Mrs Clinton by any means. Moves are being made to try to impeach her immediately in the event of her triumphing next week while even respected Republicans are openly backing plans to block any presidential nominee to the Supreme Court until such times as an acceptable Republican can be found.

The shadow of the National Rifle Association looms large as liberal America, shocked by the ferocity of the vendetta against Mrs Clinton, wonders just how long she will be allowed to pursue a reforming agenda. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anyone else to become President more than Hillary Rodham Clinton. If she is allowed to, she can cure America of its sickness.