On Saturday Night Live, Maya Rudolph’s Kamala Harris Sets the Tone

There’s a sketch from an October 2016 episode of Saturday Night Live that—no matter how you voted in the last two presidential elections, or how you will in this year’s trilogy-conclusion-coded contest—will give you time-traveling goosebumps.

The episode aired nine days after the leak of the infamous Access Hollywood tape, in which former president Donald Trump exalted grabbing women “by the pussy.” The sketch is the cold open, the first of the night. The camera settles in on former cast members Cecily Strong and Alex Moffat, both playing journalists moderating a debate between Trump (played, then, by Alec Baldwin) and Hillary Clinton, played by Kate McKinnon. McKinnon’s take on Clinton by this point in the election was well established: a gleeful ambition monster, a woman who has to be told by her staff that she can’t be her own VP, who warms up her vocals by singing “first female president—me-me-me-me-meeee!”

As she introduces the players, Strong says, “Please welcome Republican candidate Donald Trump and—” She glances at Moffat. “Can we say this yet?”

He shrugs. “Probably fine.”

“President Hillary Clinton,” Strong finishes. The laugh she gets is swift and sure. And—as we know now, of course—wrong.

Later in the sketch, when asked to name something she likes about Trump, McKinnon’s Clinton says, “I do like how generous he is. Just last Friday—” She does a karate kick for emphasis. “—He handed me this election.”

Again there are big laughs, from an audience still three weeks away from hearing the actual punchline. The episode of SNL that aired on November 13, 2016 opened with a very different vibe. It was the first after Trump, not Clinton, won the election. There was no sketch. The stage was dark, the audience somber. McKinnon—in costume as Clinton, but not really in character—sat at a piano. She sang Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah.” When the song was over, she looked into the camera. “I’m not giving up,” she said, “and neither should you.”