The best comes last.

In a week of speeches like we’ve never seen in our lifetime, with one stirring, heartbreaking or inspirational speech after another electrifying the crowd at the Democratic National Convention, the biggest question Kamala Harris asked herself before taking the stage for the event’s final keynote speech was, “How can she top all of this?”

How can you top the fire of AOC? How can you top the eloquence and resonance of Hillary Clinton? The eloquence of Pete Buttigieg? The loving words of Doug Emhoff? The heartbreaking statements of the women who have suffered under Donald Trump’s attack on their basic rights and bodily autonomy? The powerful remarks of one Republican leader after another, from Olivia Troye to Adam Kinzinger, saying they would vote for Kamala this year not as Democrats but as patriots to protect our democracy?

The church visit that Reverend Raphael Warnock and then-Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries took the crowd to? Oprah’s glowing surprise address? The big names like Bill Clinton or Nancy Pelosi? The rising stars like Wes Moore and Gretchen Whitmer? Joe Biden’s farewell speech? The completely expected, yet unmatched, mastery of Michelle and Barack Obama? The “born again” vibe of Tim Walz’s speeches, enhanced by the pictures of his loving family? The heartbreaking personal stories of victims of gun violence?

Choose the analogy that fits your times. This week in Chicago was the Woodstock or Live Aid or Lollapalooza or Coachella or Burning Man of political oratory, but fortunately for everyone present, it was better staged and far more enjoyable for attendees than any of those.

Michelle Obama described it as “magical.” Everyone spoke of the joy that made everyone’s speeches sound even more impactful, more consistent, and higher-pitched than the masterfully curated playlist that accompanied the ceremonial roll call vote on Tuesday night.

All of this was building to a crescendo that capped the most remarkable month of spontaneous, nationwide momentum in US political history. That meant the pressure was on for the Vice President of the United States. Could she earn this week of praise? Could she live up to the expectations of the crowd, or the audience watching on TV at home?

And more importantly, could she serve as a bridge between her inaugural tour of the country and the festivities of the DNC and the harsh realities of the home stretch of the campaign, a campaign that will come down to a choice on Election Day between her and a man who has already vowed to undermine our democracy and will – as Harris has said so often – continue his work of curtailing our most basic freedoms?

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Harris had to top it all and then make the decisive call to action. She had to somehow translate the good feelings, the record fundraising, and the growing momentum, starting with early voting, which begins in about three weeks, to block and combat voter turnout, combat Republican efforts to suppress it, and, you know, save the country and the world from another four years of Trump.

That she did just that is remarkable and momentous. Even if she didn’t reach the high points of the Obama speech or the emotional depths plumbed by a simple cut from Tim Walz to his son Gus, she delivered not only the speech of her life on Thursday night, but one that in content, tone and historical significance surpassed all the others she had given that week and that would have made Daniel Webster sit up and take notes.

Harris’ speech turned out to be structured similarly to the New York Times predicted. They wrote Thursday that the speech would contain three core goals. First, to define who she is. Second, to portray the election as a contest between the past and the future. And finally, importantly, to reclaim the banner of “patriotism” for Democrats. But as for the speech itself, like any good speech, it was clear from the moment she took the stage just after 10:30 p.m. Thursday night that its effectiveness lay not in the broad strokes but in the details and delivery, the moments that best connected Harris, her beliefs and her audience.

It was a virtuoso performance that unfolded as one would expect from a major star who was rumored to be taking the stage Thursday night but ended up not showing. It began close-up, intimate, with warmth and humanity. Then it steadily built up, with each section outdoing the last. From personal memories of her own origin story, she built up until she not only recounted her time as a prosecutor and attorney general, but also revealed the steely determination that characterized her in those jobs.

From there, she went from strength to strength as she described the threat posed by her opponent and bad actors around the world and made her commitment to America’s strength. Over the course of more than 40 minutes, she nearly transformed from the girl who grew up in Oakland into the woman who should and must be America’s next Commander in Chief.

She was a very different kind of communicator than the others who opened the convention. Her style was confident, values-based and empathy-based. It was neither the Horatio Algerian blue-collar story of Biden nor the stirring, almost poetic rhetoric of Obama. It was much more human. But it also left no doubt that she was ready to take on the role of the most powerful person in the world. (However, one notable fact about the speech is that at no point did she address Hillary Clinton’s “glass ceiling.”

Brendan McDermid/Reuters

She, who was first in every office she was elected to – the first woman, the first woman of color, the first Asian woman – never mentioned the historic precedents she would set. She knew we knew. It was a sign of the kind of confidence that permeated her speech.

Her rhetoric reflected both the best aspects of a storyteller telling stories about people and the role of a leader calling a nation to rise up and act at a moment of great historical significance.

Her parents’ words to her were a refrain from the beginning: “Run, Kamala, run. Don’t be afraid. Don’t let anything stop you.” “Never complain about injustice. Do something about it.” “Never do anything half-heartedly.”

Then she laid out the principles, the laws that personally guided this dedicated prosecutor. “Whoever harms one of us harms us all.” Her commitment to “holding sacred the fundamental principles of America… from the rule of law… to the peaceful transfer of power.” “The future is always worth fighting for.”

She set the historic stakes: “This election … is one of the most important in the life of our nation.” She described Trump’s crimes like a prosecutor presenting an indictment, outlining his “express intent” in many of them to do harm. She concluded her description of Trump’s intention to strip women of more of their basic rights and to create a panel to oversee miscarriages and abortions in every state with an emphatic and unforgettable line: “To put it simply: You are insane.”

Listening to this, one couldn’t help but think of the very real possibility that Trump, after spending much of his life evading prosecutors for many of his crimes or playing the game of the passage of time against Merrick Garland’s Justice Department, had finally met the prosecutor who would take him down, who would signal to him that his time was now up.

She adeptly argued that Trump was completely unfit to serve as president, as our commander in chief. And then she made it crystal clear that she was ready for both roles, outlining her role on the most important domestic and foreign policy issues of our time. In fact, her arguments on national security issues were so powerful, concrete and persuasive – building on the presentations she had made earlier in the evening by former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Senator Mark Kelly and Representative Adam Kinzinger – that national security and foreign policy were perhaps the surprise guests of the evening.

And then, as all great storytellers do, she took us back home, back to the beginning of the story, back to her mother and the values ​​she was taught as a child:

Our opponents in this race are out there every day denigrating America. They talk about how terrible everything is. Well, my mother had another lesson that she always taught. Don’t let anyone tell you who you are. Show them who you are.

America, let us show each other – and the world – who we are. And what we stand for. Freedom. Opportunity. Compassion. Dignity. Fairness. And endless possibilities.

We are the heirs to the greatest democracy in world history. And on behalf of our children and grandchildren and all those who have made such great sacrifices for our freedom, we must be worthy of this moment. Now it is our turn to do what generations before us have done. Guided by optimism and faith, let us fight for this country we love.

To fight for the ideals that are dear to us.

And to live up to the enormous responsibility that comes with the greatest privilege in the world: the privilege and pride of being American.

So let’s go out and fight for it.

Let’s go out and vote for it.

And let us together write the next great chapter of the most extraordinary story of all time.

She took us from the familiar to the exciting, from the facts we needed to the call to action the moment demanded. And in doing so, she provided the best and only possible conclusion to an extraordinary convention, its greatest speech, and, beyond that, the impetus to begin the hard but necessary work of actually winning the election.