With the Iowa Caucuses now just a few weeks away, the Gandhian principles at work in the Bernie Sanders campaign are manifesting themselves in historic fashion.

Mohandes Gandhi maintained in his essays on Satyagraha that there is no political force that can ultimately overcome the power of truth. The non-violent, but determined and consistent voicing of truthful assertions by an oppressed people cannot be silenced and will always overcome the oppressor, regardless of the political, economic or military power it possesses.

Maintaining consistency of truthful assertions throughout a presidential election process in the United States of America is no trivial matter. It requires strong discipline and a willingness to risk public alienation when the principles a candidate is promoting conflict with popular conventional thinking.

Since the beginning of the campaign early last summer when he first announced his intention to seek the Democratic Presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders has remained consistent and true to himself on all the major issues of the day. He has remained true to his promise not to run a negative campaign. He has refused to accept campaign contributions from corporate super PACS. He has taken vocal, controversial stands on issues ranging from criminal justice reform and the legalization of marijuana to opposition to sending ground troops to fight ISIS in the Middle East, to an unwavering self-description as a Democratic-Socialist. He has delivered his consistent, progressive message to huge crowds ranging from the liberal strongholds in Portland, Oregon and Boston, Massachusetts to arguably the most conservative audience anywhere in our nation at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.

To be sure, this campaign has put his determination to the test numerous times, especially since October when the Democratic Presidential debate schedule began. His Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, as well as Donald Trump and the other Republican candidates and the corporate news media have used exaggeration, distortion, blatant dishonesty and dirty tricks in an attempt to discredit him and goad him into repudiating parts of his platform.

In the first debate, despite Sanders’ refusal to exploit the issue of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, she turned on him by distorting his record on gun control and attempted to paint him as a tool of the National Rifle Association and the Gun Lobby. This attack from Clinton was employed despite Sanders consistent record in support of gun control that has earned him a rating of “D” and “F” from the NRA throughout his career. On several occasions he voted against particular gun control measures introduced in Congress because he disagreed with individual provisions contained within the complex pieces of legislation that he considered unjust. When he answered Clinton with his often-repeated admonition that people need to “stop shouting at each other” about guns and rather sit down to talk about areas of agreement that could help solve the gun problem, she used his statement, after the debate, to accuse him of misogyny.

“Well, I haven’t been shouting, but sometimes when a woman speaks out, some people think it’s shouting,” she said.

This line would probably have been effective against any other male candidate. But, because Bernie Sanders has a long, deep, consistent record of standing up for women’s rights, it served rather to portray Hillary Clinton as someone desperately looking for a way to tear down her opponent. He had used the same phrase, “people need to stop shouting at each other,” dozens of times in relation to the gun issue over the past several months of the campaign. Her suggestion that he was demeaning her as a woman by using this phrase was undermined by the reality of his public record. Further, as a result of this disingenuous attack it came to light that unlike Clinton, Sanders continues to call for a revival of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. While Sanders supports current legislation that would provide paid family leave with a minimal addition to payroll taxes, Clinton has refused to endorse this concept. Sanders has long championed the rights of gay and lesbian couples to marry and have equal status under the law as straight couples, whereas Hillary Clinton has opposed these rights until very recently. In other words, Bernie Sanders has a better record on issues that address women’s rights than does Hillary Clinton.

Clinton’s public image was damaged from this episode, but not through any effort by Bernie Sanders. It was a result of her own words that were carefully crafted for the purpose of manipulating public opinion rather than as an expression of truth. In the long term, history will almost certainly record that this attack only served to confirm and augment the reputation of Bernie Sanders as a person of deep integrity who respects the rights of women and all people.

In an unprecedented manner after each of the first three debates, online polls overwhelmingly favored Sanders as the winner who spoke on the issues in a way that resonated most with viewers. Yet the corporate media pundits almost unanimously pronounced Hillary Clinton “the winner.” News reports following the debates all depicted Clinton as “the winner.” The vast majority of people who didn’t see the debates were told by the news media that Clinton “won” the debates. Then, polls were taken of the general population, most of whom hadn’t seen the debate, and these “revealed” that most people believed Hillary Clinton won the debates. But, in the weeks that followed, social media on the internet set the record straight. It was the corporate news media who lost credibility as Sanders’ numbers once again began to rise in the polls.

When Hillary Clinton appeared before the disgraceful Benghazi hearing in Congress, she admirably stood up to the Republican moral midgets who used taxpayer money and valuable congressional time to perpetuate the witch trial against her. For that brief moment Truth was on her side and it made her shine, reflecting itself positively in the polls. Had she been willing and able to maintain that stature and moral high ground it would have been a different campaign and a model of admiration for future generations to study and imitate.

But, it quickly became apparent that this was only a moment of glitter that could not delete a deep undercurrent of political manipulation and subterfuge on a stage that had long been set. As the debate schedule unfolded it became increasingly apparent that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had coordinated with the Clinton campaign to schedule the limited number of debates at times when they would receive the least viewership. DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, formerly the head of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, manipulated the process by scheduling only 6 debates while creating an unprecedented rule prohibiting the candidates from taking part in any other debates. The purpose was to limit public exposure to candidates other than Hillary Clinton who was already a household name throughout America.

This grossly inappropriate favoritism and weighted process exploded into the spotlight and backfired completely when, in December, the Sanders IT Manager, Josh Uretsky, caught, for the second time, a breach in the DNC’s database that allowed the different campaigns to view the data from the other Democratic candidate campaigns. Uretsky inappropriately viewed data from the Clinton Campaign and reported the glitch to the DNC as he had done several months earlier when a similar breach occurred. Uretsky was immediately fired by the Sanders campaign for viewing the data.

But, DW Schultz, in a wild over-reaction, cut off the Sanders campaign from its own data, effectively shutting down its fundraising and information-sharing operation. She only backed off several days later when the Sanders campaign took the case to federal court to call for an injunction and threatened to sue the DNC for damages. In the process the curtain was stripped away revealing for all to see how Schultz and the DNC were inappropriately tied to the Clinton campaign and were manipulating the nomination process. This in turn brought into the spotlight Clinton’s history of dirty tricks and distortions during her campaign against Barack Obama in 2008, with its sometimes racial undertones and her own misuse of the DNC’s database that did not result in the same kind of extreme reaction and punishment.

Throughout this episode, Sanders maintained a calm and respectful manner. He apologized to Hillary Clinton during the third debate for the actions of his fired database manager, but decried the over-reaction of the DNC. Then he ended discussion of this issue by reminding everyone that there are more important things to talk about like income inequality, climate change and a broken criminal justice system.

The mass shootings in Roseburg, Oregon, Colorado Springs and San Bernardino, California provided an opportunity for his opponents to once again distort and attack Sanders’ record on gun control. The terrorist attack in Paris gave license to the press to portray Sanders as soft on terrorism and weak on foreign policy. But, Sanders refused to waver. He has maintained his solidity and consistency throughout. On gun control, he is in a position to bring both sides together to develop common sense legislation that would expand instant background checks and close the gun-show loophole. On foreign policy and the Middle East, the military option should be the last resort, not the first; and it should be the Muslim nations, not the U.S. that have troops on the ground to defeat ISIS.

Hillary Clinton has used these horrific news events in an entirely different way in her campaign. She has used the mass shootings in an effort to once again distort Sanders’ record, portraying him as pro-Gun Lobby, as she has attempted to create her own image as an unwavering supporter of strong gun control measures. But, this line of attack has resulted instead in the resurfacing of her own record and campaign attacks against Obama in 2008 when she portrayed herself as pro-gun and Obama as too much of an advocate for gun control.

After the Paris terrorist attack Clinton and virtually all the Republican candidates, with the notable exception of Rand Paul, knee-jerked with a militaristic response to show that they would be strong, tough potential Presidents on foreign policy. For Clinton, this instant reaction served to undermine her previous acknowledgement that her approval of GW Bush’s War in Iraq had been a mistake from which she had learned. She may have gained a short-term bump in the polls by calling for a no-fly zone over Syria, in opposition to President Obama. But, that dissipated within days. The lingering impression is that Hillary Clinton is quick to reach for the military option, regardless of the consequences to members of the military and their families. Sanders in strong contrast has repeatedly invoked these consequences as his popularity among veterans groups has soared.

As the date of the Iowa Caucuses rapidly approaches, seemingly in desperation mode, the Clinton campaign has turned to the argument that “only she” is electable and can defeat the Republican nemesis. The argument is that Bernie Sanders is too old, too liberal, indeed a Socialist and voters in this country will never elect a Socialist. Clinton, on the other hand is “prepared” to step into the White House. She knows the White House and has lived there. She has more experience and is better known to the public. “It is her turn,” it is argued.

For the past 9 months Clinton has done all she could to avoid acknowledging Sanders’ existence, even to the point of never mentioning his name during her campaign, hoping he and his revolution would peter out and disappear. One might facetiously ask her, “How did that work out for you?”

After a summer, fall and half-winter of being ignored, ridiculed and misrepresented by the corporate news media and his opponents, what is the result when matched against his campaign of unwavering truth, fairness and consistency? After being outspent with corporate money by all his opponents; after being declared dead in the water with no chance of winning the nomination; after a skewed debate schedule and an attempt to shut down his campaign by the DNC; after terrorist attacks and mass shootings; after the Bernie Blackout, where does his campaign of Truth stand today?

No one can accurately predict the results of an election with all its modern variables including manipulation of the voting process through repressive voter ID laws, the purging of voter rolls in some states, and the unknown extent of manipulation of electronic voting machines. But, if we can use polls to observe trends rather than assign them day-to-day accuracy, Bernie Sanders is surging and Hillary Clinton is sinking. A string of recent polls show a dead heat in both Iowa and New Hampshire.

Nationwide, in South Carolina and in Nevada, the 3rd and 4th states to hold primaries, Sanders’ support in the African American and Hispanic communities has risen into the mid-30’s up from single digits in the early days of the campaign.

Further, polls have been consistent since mid-summer in showing that Sanders would be the stronger candidate in November against all potential Republican opponents. At least two polls gave Sanders a 13 point lead over the Republican leading candidate Donald Trump. If that margin were to hold true on election day, it would be among the most profound landslide victories in American history, most likely sweeping in a new progressive majority in both houses of Congress and a new progressive era in American politics with a mandate to end the corporate rule that has dominated for decades.

It might legitimately be called the 2nd American Revolution. Truthfully.

Make sure you vote in the primaries this year.