He needed more makeup to look less like Emperor Palpatine, and launching by video always feels like a cop out. But Joe Biden nailed the message he needed to cement his front-runner status in the 2020 primary: This isn’t a question of politics, but the battle for America’s soul.

Biden effectively capitalized on the #Resistance’s ire while also providing an implicit but key dichotomy to those on the Right. Do you stand with a president who equivocates around the evils of white supremacy, or do you, conservative policy and all, stand with decency? He doesn’t frame the Trump administration as an inevitability, a natural endpoint for the Republican Party, but rather a mistake, “and abhorrent moment in time.” Biden came out of the gate with the distinction Hillary Clinton failed to make until it was too late: The alt-right is a cancer on, not a feature of, conservatism and the country.