He essentially tied Pete Buttigieg in the Iowa caucuses and is slightly favored to win the primary on Tuesday in New Hampshire, where he trounced Hillary Clinton four years ago. He leads Buttigieg by significant margins in polls in the two states, Nevada and then South Carolina, that follow it. Meanwhile, it’s hard to see how Elizabeth Warren pulls ahead of him, and Joe Biden is struggling to overcome a humiliating fourth-place finish in Iowa. That makes Sanders as strong a bet as any other candidate to nab the Democratic nomination.

The reasons for his success include his similarities to Trump, but don’t get me wrong: There’s no alignment of agendas among the two of them, no common set of political values and no moral equivalence — not remotely. I’ve read too much journalism that comes too close to suggesting that they’re versions of the same old white guy and have the same sloppiness with facts, talent for bullying and instinct for demagogy. Trump is a tyrant all his own.

But Sanders is a populist of the left as surely as Trump is a populist of the right, with a familiar distaste for compromise and a comparable appeal to Americans outraged or disgusted by politics as usual and by the usual politicians.

He, like Trump, breaks the mold and defies the laws of political gravity: He had a heart attack last fall, at the age of 78, and it didn’t scare away voters or slow his stride. While Trump claims leadership of “a movement the likes of which the world has never seen,” Sanders spearheads a “revolution,” to be brought about by “the most unprecedented campaign in the modern history of this country.” And aspects of his pitch — on trade, for example — resonate with the blue-collar workers in the Rust Belt who were important to Trump’s election. While some of Trump’s advisers believe that Sanders would be an easily caricatured foil, others believe that he could be trouble.

Look closely and you see the spirit and lessons of Trump all over the Democratic primary and the Democratic Party. You see it in the Biden campaign’s questioning of the legitimacy of the Iowa results days before The Times discovered and reported on specific irregularities. You see it in Mike Bloomberg’s merciless trolling of Trump with commercials that make him look fat and unhinged, and statements that would be shockingly juvenile but for their mimicry of Trump’s taunts. Julie Wood, a spokeswoman for Bloomberg’s campaign, recently called the president “a pathological liar who lies about everything: his fake hair, his obesity and his spray-on tan.”

You see it Nancy Pelosi’s theatrical ripping up of her copy of Trump’s State of the Union address. And you see it in the dive bar in Iowa where, on the eve of the caucuses, one Sanders supporter led others in a crude call-and-response, as recounted by Shawn McCreesh in Rolling Stone. The supporter would say the F word, and everyone would answer “Biden!” or “Warren!” or such.

Is this the rowdy road to a Democratic victory in November 2020? My brain and gut both say no, and those who think so — and who designate Sanders as the one to lead the stampede — overlook several dynamics, starting with policy. Polling shows that most Americans dislike a “Medicare for all” plan that eliminates private insurance, as Sanders’s signature proposal does. Polling also shows that most Americans wouldn’t want that plan to cover undocumented immigrants. Sanders’s covers them.