Kamala Harris hit the ground running on Sunday, officially launching her White House bid with a massive Oakland rally that drew an estimated 20,000 people and instantly cast her into the top-tier of Democratic candidates. Speaking in her hometown, the California senator tore into Donald Trump, telling the crowd that the president does not represent “our America,” and vowing to restore American leadership at home and abroad.

“I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for President of the United States,” Harris said. “I’m running for president because I love my country . . . I’m running to be president of the people, by the people, and for all people.”

It was a powerful speech, one that traced her current fight against the Trump administration to her Oakland roots and parents who raised her to believe that “public service is a noble cause and the fight for justice is everyone’s responsibility.” It also saw Harris move to get out ahead of some of the criticism her campaign has already begun to face from the more progressive corners of the Democratic Party over her record on criminal justice during her time as district attorney of San Francisco and California attorney general. “I am not perfect,” she told the crowd. “Lord knows, I am not perfect. But I will always speak with decency and moral clarity and treat all people with dignity and respect.”

The rally generated a favorable reaction for the 54-year-old senator, who has emerged as a Democratic star of the Trump era for her sharp criticism of the president and her high-profile grillings of his nominees. The launch drew comparisons to former President Barack Obama, who also officially announced his campaign with a large rally in his home state—in his case Illinois, outside Springfield’s Old State Capitol, where Abraham Lincoln gave his historic “House Divided” speech. Some regarded Harris’s address to be even stronger than Obama’s, and suggested the early signs of Harris’s momentum may give other potential aspirants second thoughts about joining the 2020 field. “This race has only begun, but there are some folks who should now re-run the [calculus] on their political futures,” the Daily Beast’s Goldie Taylor wrote on Twitter. “Several otherwise strong candidates have been testing the water—Bernie, Hillary, Beto, and Corey, among others. This changes the math for them.”

While the address did seem to confer front-runner status on Harris, the Iowa caucus—the first contest of the Democratic primary—is still more than a year away, and plenty can change in the interim. Harris’s Democratic opponents are likely to put her record, both as a prosecutor and as a senator, under the microscope. More high-profile Democrats, including Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, appear poised to enter the race. And, as former Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer noted, keeping her foot on the gas throughout the entirety of the long, exhausting race could prove a challenge: “There were moments in 2008 when Obama would get a lead or our opponents would go through tough spots and we would default to a more conventional, [risk averse] campaign and we always suffered when that happened,” he tweeted.

Perceived front-runners also run the risk of attracting the “establishment” label, leaving them vulnerable to progressive challengers. Still, Harris’s speech was a strong start and one that signaled how formidable a figure she’ll be heading into 2020. “She really took a large step toward demonstrating—not telling people, but demonstrating to people—she’s a candidate who can go the distance,” former Obama adviser Anita Dunn told the Los Angeles Times.

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