It was all about the speech. Kamala Harris’s address to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago was a now-or-never moment that would either supercharge her bid to become America’s first woman president, or prove the doubters correct. Make history, or be history.

But the balloons mattered too. Convention lore has it that an unsuccessful balloon drop spells failure ahead. It’s like Groundhog Day, but with balloons.

In 1980, the balloons for Jimmy Carter got stuck in the nets. He went on to lose the election. In 2004, John Kerry’s red white and blues puttered out in dribs and drabs. A stray microphone picked up the mayhem backstage. “Go balloons, go balloons! Why the hell is nothing falling?” screamed the convention producer. Kerry lost the election.

In the event, the convention gods smiled on Harris, giving her a dream ending to a pinch-me few weeks. Some 100,000 balloons poured from the ceiling. At one point it seemed there might have been too many and a Spinal Tap moment was on the cards, but the deluge stopped just in time. The balloon drop, like Harris’s policy-lite and personality-heavy speech, passed the test.

Harris will never forget being in that cauldron of light and sound, nor will any of the thousands of delegates and media present. I know because once upon a time I was granted access to the magic kingdom that is the party convention.

At the start of 2004, Mark Douglas-Home, then editor of The Herald, asked if I wanted to go to the conventions in Boston (Democrats) and New York (Republicans) as part of covering the US election. It was like asking a child if they fancied a trip to Disney World. Before he finished the question I had booked the flights.

Herald photographer Colin Mearns and I set off on the yellow brick road to Glasgow Airport and onwards to Boston. As we arrived at the convention centre the place seemed under siege. Three years on from 9/11 and a year since the invasion of Iraq, no one was taking any chances with security.

Which was reassuring unless you were in a huge queue to get into the building and had a fast-approaching deadline. Finally, we rocked up at the offices of USA Today, The Herald’s sister paper, begging for sanctuary and a working internet connection.

With my story and Colin’s pictures sent to the news desk in Glasgow, it was time for the day’s most important business - picking up a media goodie bag. I can list the contents easily enough because they are on the desk beside me as I write. A mug, check. Tote bag. Pens and various notebooks. City guides. Badges. A packet of macaroni. All the essentials.

We quickly settled into a daily routine, Colin in the mosh pit of photographers on the convention floor and me up in the press benches. This would be my home for the next week, apart from spells in the USA Today office with its regularly restocked fridge of cold drinks and snacks. God I loved that office.

The press benches operated on a hierarchy, with the big cheeses - Times, Post, Newsweek etc - given desks and chairs, and the rest of us camping out on the nosebleed seats. Twenty years on, things have changed. Mainstream titles are losing desk space to social media influencers, many of them only too happy to put out the party line unfiltered.

On the night Obama spoke I had been camped out on the same spot for seven hours, no breaks. It was worth every second.

Obama echoed his 2004 speech in his 2024 address this week, saying of Kamala: “This convention has always been pretty good to kids with funny names who believe in a country where anything is possible.”

It is the kind of corny line you could only get away with in a convention speech. As Brad Meilke, ABC News correspondent and podcast host says: “Conventions are now less about choosing a candidate and more about celebrating the candidate.” There is a lot of selling to be done. First to the delegates in the hall, then to the media, and finally, and most importantly, to the voters at home, either watching on television in primetime, or on a screen of their choice at a time of their choosing.

It wouldn’t be a celebration without music. Tunes are pumped into the convention hall morning, afternoon and evening. It’s a listening marathon rather than a dance one, though bouts of twirling break out now and then, even in the press area, in fact especially in the press area.

The playlist in Chicago this week included such convention classics as Higher Love, Sweet Home Alabama, Love Train, I Won’t Back Down, Respect, Born in the USA and Celebration by Kool and the Gang.

Chicago surpassed the expectations of even the most optimistic Harris supporter. It could have gone horribly wrong. Usually by the time of the convention, a candidate would have had a year in the trenches of the primaries. Time to get their faces known, to hone their message.

Harris had none of that. When she tried for the nomination in 2019 her campaign collapsed in the early stages. For the last four years, most Americans have only known her as Biden’s even more unpopular vice president. Yet here she is, reinvented and repackaged as a serious contender for the White House.

She passed the acceptance speech test by keeping the message modest. Borrowing from the Keir Starmer playbook, Harris presented herself as the anti-chaos candidate, the antidote to Trump and his plans for America. She found the right tone on Gaza, on women’s health, and she did it all in just 38 minutes.

Now comes the hard part, going back to reality. Outside the convention centre there is a whole other world waiting for Harris, parts of it hostile, parts that don’t care, and the questions are only going to get harder and the fight more intense.

Thursday night showed she could rise to the occasion. No one should have been surprised. She has had a lifetime of public speaking, putting her case across. In Chicago she was in charge. It won’t be like that in the live televised debate with Trump on 10 September.

For Trump, for Harris, the party conventions are over. Now the real fun and games begin.