Biden wasn’t the HRC’s top choice to speak Saturday night. Hillary Clinton got the first invitation. President Barack Obama got an early ask too. But she wanted to make the season premiere of “Saturday Night Live,” and Obama passed too, opening up another opportunity for Biden to remind every Democratic operative paying attention that important voting blocs like him, a lot.

The Human Rights Campaign, meanwhile, jumped at the chance to rearrange its schedule to land Clinton, creating a breakfast event for her to speak and collect some loud “Hillary! Hillary!” chants.

She didn’t mention his name. He didn’t mention hers.

But the comparisons were there for the taking -- and he kept offering them up.

Clinton delivered a forceful speech about the future of LGBT rights to a standing group of Human Rights Campaign board members and staff. Biden showed up eight hours later in a packed ballroom to remind the crowd that he’d been with them all along—at least, longer than Clinton even if his own history in the Senate wasn’t always so pioneering on these issues.

Biden detailed an LGBT agenda that put him way out ahead of Obama and the White House—and placed him, conveniently, in a central role that boxed out much of Clinton’s call to action that morning.

While Clinton said she supported the policy review underway at the Defense Department that might lead the military to allow transgender Americans to serve, Biden argued that he was the one who first spoke out about allowing the practice. He was the one, Biden said, who got Defense Secretary Ash Carter to agree to look into the issue.

And while Clinton is eager to see the results of the review, Biden wouldn’t wait, saying instead that he was sure the administration needed to go forward with rewriting the policy.

The Human Rights Campaign’s major aim at this year’s dinner was whipping support for the Equality Act, which would override state laws that don’t include anti-LGBT discrimination provisions. “As president, I will fight for it,” Clinton said Saturday morning. Obama hasn’t taken a position. Biden endorsed it Saturday night.

Biden also appears to have let slip a larger White House effort to reverse the dishonorable discharges of anyone who, through history, was kicked out of the military for being gay. That’s a move Clinton called for in her speech Saturday morning. Biden told them he and the president were already on it.

And of course, he reminded the crowd that didn’t need reminding — HRC president Chad Griffin introduced him as “someone who’s been known to be a little impatient when it comes to doing the right thing” — that he was the one who leapfrogged Obama on endorsing gay marriage in 2012 and forcing the president’s hand. (A sensitive enough issue for Clinton that Kate McKinnon’s “could have been sooner” dig about her late arrival on the issue was a lone cold note in her otherwise welcoming and warm “Saturday Night Live” appearance.)

“I made a point,” Biden said, recalling his conversations in the West Wing with the people who were yelling at him. “You guys are way out of step. The American people are already there.”

If Biden runs, he’ll be counting on major support among the LGBT community, both in terms of votes and donors. Already, people connected with the vice president and with the Draft Biden effort have reached out to a number of LGBT donors, and he’d look to use the affection he generates within the community to energize a Democratic primary campaign and the larger progressive base that connects with their cause.

To hear Biden tell it, he’s been with the Human Rights Campaign for longer than the Human Rights Campaign has been around, this time pulling one of his less frequently used stories about his father to talk about a time when he was 17 years old—this would have been 1959—and he saw two men in business suits kiss each other goodbye on their way to work.

“Joey, they’re in love with each other. It’s that simple,” Biden recalled his father telling him, then turning his attention to the 3,500 activists in black tie and their history of work: “You left the Supreme Court no choice whatsoever but to recognize the simple proposition my father taught me 50 years ago.”

Clinton in the morning talked about how the work of the Human Rights Campaign had helped get her thinking into the right place, and her promises for what she’d do in the White House.

“I want you to know that I get it,” Clinton said, talking about a future beyond the relics of discrimination, like the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy that she condemned without acknowledging the sensitive history of her husband’s role in establishing that when he was president. “I see the injustices and the dangers that you and your families still face, and I’m running for president to end them once and for all.”

“I’ve been fighting alongside you and others for equal rights – and I’m just getting warmed up,” Clinton she added later.

Biden talked about how the people in front of him had changed the country and created a foundation that couldn’t be undone, telling them, “You did so much more than anything those of us in public life ever did.”

Caught in the middle was the Human Rights Campaign, a group that has much to celebrate from the Obama years and a president that Griffin repeatedly tried to whip up applause for as the “most pro-equality president in the history of this nation,” but who only generated a lukewarm response from the crowd.

The politics of the crowd weren’t hard to pin down—a video montage ahead of Griffin’s speech documenting the history of LGBT rights finished by showing the work still to be done, cutting right from Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis to Jeb Bush to Ted Cruz to Vladimir Putin to the president of Uganda.

Cruz and Mike Huckabee, who’ve rallied by the side of Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis as she’s refused to certify same sex marriages, are “whackadoo extremists,” Griffin said, shaking his head and insisting that they had to make sure they and people like them never become president.

“The good news is we all have a say in what happens next November,” Griffin said, prompting a woman at the dinner to shout, “Run Joe Run!”

It’s not like Biden wasn’t aware that the question of whether he’ll run for president was hanging over everything.

“A number of you have said to me over the last three or four years…” he said, letting the sentence trail off before someone called out, “You should run!”

“No, didn’t say that,” he said, looking down.

Then he flashed a smile.

“Anyway, what was I saying?”