Schumer played an effective surrogate, hitting hard on the theme that while Clinton’s unnamed opponents might talk a big game, she actually has a record of progressive victories. “She delivers,” Schumer said. Then the Brooklyn-born senator deliberately exaggerated his already thick accent, in a knowing nod to that other Brooklyn-born senator who now represents Vermont. “She may not always tawk like we Brooklynites tawk,” Schumer said as the crowd whooped, “but when she speaks out she changes minds, she changes hearts, she moves to action, and she changes outcomes.”

Much of the Harlem rally felt like a flashback to 2008, to a time when Bill Clinton was still “the first black president” and Hillary was Senator Clinton, not Secretary Clinton. Both Schumer and Clinton spent more time bashing George W. Bush than praising Barack Obama, and there was barely a mention of the four years Clinton spent globe-trotting as secretary of state. “Trickle-down economics,” Clinton said in one rhetorical blast from the past, “made life harder for people in our state.” The dramatic arc of Clinton’s speech centered on 9/11, which occurred just eight months after she was sworn in as senator. She recalled her efforts, working alongside Schumer, to secure recovery funds for the city and to pass the Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act. “New Yorkers took a chance on me, and I will never forget that,” Clinton said. “There were some hard times, weren’t there? But we pulled together.”

She wove the attacks into her three-part test for a president: Can he or she deliver results that improve people’s lives? Can he or she keep America safe? Can he or she bring the country together? And it was here that Clinton shifted from her New York nostalgia tour to a sharpened version of her 2016 stump speech, one in which she positioned herself against Sanders on one side and Trump and Ted Cruz on the other. She hit Sanders for siding with the NRA on gun control and for touting policies that she described as impractical. “Now some folks may have the luxury of holding out for the perfect,” Clinton said. “But a lot of Americans are hurting right now, and they can't wait for that. They need the good, and they need it today.”

She attacked Trump and Cruz for their policies on immigrants, especially Trump’s call for banning Muslims from entering the country and Cruz’s push for police to surveil Muslim neighborhoods. “It doesn’t make them sound strong,” Clinton said. “It makes them sound in over their head.”

It’ll be a winning line for Democrats nationwide, and it worked particularly well at the Apollo, where the crowd reflected the diversity not only of Harlem but of Clinton's broader coalition. If the recent polls giving Clinton a comfortable lead over Sanders are correct, she probably doesn’t need to step foot in New York to win the state. But delegates in New York are awarded by congressional district, and Clinton needs to pad her margin in the city to offset rural areas where Sanders might have an advantage. Clinton’s campaign packed the stage behind her with young women who carried signs that said ‘Welcome Home’ and who chanted, “I’m with her!” and “Madam President!” But the many young faces in the Harlem crowd also highlighted Clinton’s challenge: In New York, the voters most likely to tilt to Sanders are ones who are scarcely old enough to remember Clinton’s tenure as senator.