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The death of former New York governor Mario Cuomo Thursday triggered an immediate and laudatory recollection from Democrats of his fiercely delivered 1984 keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, with many party figures calling the address a touchstone moment that reinvigorated weary liberals during the Reagan years.

On social media, hundreds of stunned Cuomo admirers quickly shared a YouTube video of the speech upon learning of his passing, including Jon Favreau, a former speechwriter for President Obama, who wrote in a Twitter message, the speech is in my top five of all time.

Also on Twitter, Keith Boykin, a former aide in the Clinton White House, called it one of the best political speeches ever delivered.

Cuomos speech, given on a July night at the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco, was originally crafted as a response to Ronald Reagans frequent and cheery description of the United States as a shining city on a hill. Cuomo took that image and turned it, urging Reagan to look closer at the countrys condition.

This nation is more a tale of two cities than it is just a shining city on a hill, Cuomo said. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces you dont see, in the places you dont visit in your shining city.

The late former New York governor gave a keynote address at the 1984 Democratic National Convention that launched him into the spotlight. (CSPAN)

In the decades since, the speech has become a beloved text in Democratic politics, cited as an electric example of liberal vigor and hope, months before Democrat Walter F. Mondale would go on to lose to Reagan in a landslide and eight years before Bill Clinton would win the presidency.

On Twitter Thursday evening, Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation, a liberal magazine, described the speech as prescient.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), in a statement, heaped praised on Cuomos soaring oratory that stirred the very soul.

The approximately eight-minute speech was also the culmination of the political pitch Cuomo had been honing in the years before, and adhered to his long-held belief that lyrical persuasion was critical to politics, as much as the policies. At its core, there was a strong emphasis on the need for government, at both a state and federal level, to operate as a family, with care and compassion for those whose were in need.

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Cuomos 1984 speech stirred Democrats, then and for decades