To many voters, Cory Booker is the show-horse senator from New Jersey whose buffoonish "Spartacus" stunt during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing became an internet meme.

Or to grassroots activists in the Garden State, he is the dubious progressive who schmoozes with the party bosses at cocktail parties — and takes their generous campaign checks.

Or to some of his harshest critics, Booker is the consummate political animal, carefully calculating everything from his choice of his celebrity girlfriend to the creative use of curse words to attack President Donald Trump. Has "bull...t soup" ever been uttered by anyone before, let alone a politician?

Yet on Wednesday, Booker, the former Newark mayor, stepped into the sanctuary at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and gave his doubters a reason to doubt their own snap judgments of him. In a 25-minute speech, Booker delivered an impassioned, better-angels-of-our-nature appeal for a nation still raw and bewildered by the slaughters in El Paso and Dayton.

Booker not only elevated his own standing in the crowded 2020 campaign, but possibly reshaped the discourse of the entire race, and even the national conversation over gun violence and bigotry.

And in the process, Booker is forcing Democrats to look at him anew, this time as a voice of moral clarity amid the chaos of Trump.

"We must change our laws, but we must also confront our past,'' Booker told an audience, upstairs from where 21-year-old Dylann Roof, a lone-wolf white supremacist and author a hate manifesto, killed nine African Americans in 2015.

"The truth is — there is a another story we can tell about our country. A better story. Not one that ignores our mistakes or accommodates our failures," Booker said.

The power of Booker's argument was only made clearer Wednesday by the split-screen contrast with Trump, who launched a petulant Twitter storm before heading to Texas and Ohio to meet with local officials and visit survivors.

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Booker soared along the arc of history, linking the two massacres as part the nation's history of violent bigotry that stretched from the Colonial era to the 2018 riots in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Trump stewed with his smartphone, wallowing in pettiness and self-pity, pandering to his base.

Booker was welcomed in the hallowed church, and greeted with a standing ovation. Trump was greeted with protesters and officials in both cities who were less than eager to be seen with the Divider In Chief.

Booker summoned scripture and Civil Rights icons to make his point. Trump lashed out at Beto O'Rourke, a Democratic presidential candidate and former El Paso-area congressman. He accused O'Rourke of using a "phony name to indicate Hispanic heritage" and told him to "be quiet!"

Trump defended his anti-immigration rhetoric, claiming it "brings people together." Booker, without mentioning Trump by name, accused the president of "weaponizing hate as a political strategy."

"You reap what you sow," Booker said, referring to the two massacres. "It was sowed by a president who spews hateful rhetoric and endangers the lives of people of color and immigrants in this country."

This was Booker at his best, the high-profile sermon he has spent years developing. But will it amount to anything? Has this moment come too late for a candidate sputtering in basement of single-digit poll numbers with no-chance wannabes like entrepreneur Andrew Yang?

Or does this give Booker the long-elusive traction, coming so quickly on the heels of last week's impressive debate performance in Detroit? Will Democrats wary of Joe Biden give him another look?

We won't know that until the next round of polls and fundraising hauls. But there is also one more way we'll know that Booker has become viable: When Trump targets him in a tweet-storm.