Lke it or not, Kamala Harris is hot right now. In the first 24 hours after President Biden was forced out of the race, the Democratic frontrunner to replace him had pulled in $250m in online donations and big donor promises for her campaign.

It's one of the largest amounts ever received in such a short space of an election cycle - twice what Biden raised in the first two months of his campaign - and shows no sign of letting up.

The surge in online donations rocketed to $11.5m in one single hour on Sunday evening - hours after Biden withdrew.

Since then, the money flowing into ActBlue, the Democrat's online fundraising platform, from grassroots private donors has continued to rise. Nearly two thirds of these contributors were making their first donations to this year's contest.

The Democrats' billionaire backers are swinging back full circle after their threat to pull funds from Biden. Along with the Soros family, one of Biden's former biggest supporters, Silicon Valley venture capitalist Reid Hoffman, chairman of LinkedIn, is also back, promising big bucks.

Even pop stars are coming out for Harris, British ones too. Singer Charli XCX endorsed her to be the Democrat candidate, tweeting 'Kamala IS Brat'. Brat, for the uninitiated, is the pop star's latest album, number 2 in the UK charts, and the word is said to represent girls of a 'carefree' mindset who like to party.

Harris has already changed the colour of her HarrisHQ campaign account to the album's lime green. Tik Tok went berserk. Yet the Democrats will need lots more money - and trendy Gen Z voters - for a vicious fight against President Trump.

Political spending at the last 2020 election was an astonishing $14.4bn - more than double the previous record-breaking 2016 election.

Government transparency group OpenSecrets reports that Democrat candidates and groups spent $8.4bn last time, compared to $5.3bn for Republicans. Money spent on digital platforms such as Tik Tok is also set to soar.

What impact, though, apart from shifting a few more Brat albums, would a Harris presidency have on financial markets and global affairs? She has given little away. Even her first big campaign speech in Delaware was light on what she might want to do at the White House.

What we know is that Harris would be the most 'progressive' Left-wing of all US presidents, certainly on economic and social affairs. In the past, she has championed higher taxes on income, capital gains, inheritance and financial transactions and would push corporation tax back up to the pre-Trumpian 35pc level.

On spending, she has proposed a sort of universal basic income as well as Medicare for All.

These are expensive policies and add billions more debt to the books.

On foreign policy, Harris is expected to follow Biden's playbook on big issues such as Ukraine and Iran but might be tougher on Israel over the war on Gaza. On China - America's biggest geopolitical challenge - Harris is likely to stick with Biden's hawkish tariff policy on imports, a move which a growing number of trade experts question as being self-destructive. It will certainly pit her big time against Trump, whose policy towards China - and Taiwan - is often erratic but ultimately commercial.

Interestingly, polling carried out by China's X-like Weibo online site after Biden quit found that most of those polled believe that Trump will win. This election gets more gripping by the day.