Stacey Abrams has stepped onto the biggest stage of her political career and accused President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans of abandoning working Americans and fomenting partisan and cultural discord.
The Georgia Democrat introduced herself to the nation months after narrowly losing her bid to become America's first black female governor.
Instead, she became the first black woman to deliver a State of the Union response.
Speaking from a union hall in Atlanta, Abrams combined her party's vision of a more unified society with her personal story as a black daughter of the Deep South.
"These were our family values: faith, service, education and responsibility," she said, arguing for "this uncommon grace of community."
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"We do not succeed alone," she added. "In these United States, when times are tough, we can persevere because our friends and neighbours will come for us."
Abrams identified Trump as architect of a 35-day partial government shutdown that ended last month, though a possible reprise looms in the coming weeks.
"The shutdown was a stunt engineered by the president of the United States," Abrams said, "one that defied every tenet of fairness and abandoned not just our people, but our values."
Abrams' selection by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was a nod to her rising political fortunes despite her defeat last year.
Encouraged by her ability to push Republican-run Georgia toward battleground status, Schumer is trying to persuade Abrams to run for a Republican-held Senate seat in 2020 - two years after she won more votes than any Democrat in Georgia history, including presidential candidates.
Running for governor, Abrams talked often of her parents and the challenges they faced as children of the segregated Jim Crow South. She also spoke unabashedly about her personal debts, which Republicans used as an attack.
Abrams often said her student loans and other debts amassed caring for family members left her more empathetic than most politicians to what the majority of US households experience in day-to-day life.
"My family understood firsthand that while success is not guaranteed, we live in a nation where opportunity is possible," she said.
Republicans are not sparing Abrams, with party operatives lambasting her on Tuesday for a "radical liberal agenda."
Trump resisted any shots at Abrams leading up to their prime-time juxtaposition. But he has called her "unqualified" for statewide office.
On Tuesday, Trump maintained his hard-line stand on immigration, continuing to cast the southern border as a porous and fundamental threat to Americans' economic security and personal safety.
Abrams argued that a bipartisan immigration overhaul is possible.
She said she is "very disappointed by the president's approach to our problems." But she added: "I still don't want him to fail. But we need him to tell the truth, and to respect his duties and the extraordinary diversity that defines America."
