Hillary Clinton is still the clear front-runner in the Democratic National Primary. She has a sizable lead in both national polls and campaign cash, the historic benchmarks for winning the nomination in the modern era. But Bernie Sanders just raised $26 million for the quarter. No, you didn't read that wrong, $26 million and none of it from big corporations or special interests. Forget about Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders is in the race.

The firebrand Senator from Vermont wasn't given a chance when he announced he'd be seeking the Democratic nomination—another Ralph Nader, fodder for the field, a warm body to fill one of the empty podiums on debate night at best, a crazy uncle in the corner at worst.

Then, curious things began to happen. Crowds started turning up in unthinkably large numbers, dwarfing the relatively modest ones the woman being marketed as the future first female President of the United States was able to draw.

Auditoriums filled with teenage supporters clamoring to get a look at a geriatric presidential contender who'd been relatively unknown outside of his home state before this thing started. Stories of grassroots supporters taking a year off from college to work on the campaign called to mind the activism of the late '60s and early '70s.

Could this be for real? The Money! Ah, yes the all powerful dollar bills that had been spilling into the Clinton coffers like they were being shot out of a high-pressure hose surely meant that Sanders' flirtation with contention was nothing more than an aberration, the so-called blip on the radar.

Then something else happened. Sanders went from impressive showings to leading in the first two states, narrowly in Iowa and by double digits in New Hampshire. Suddenly, something close to a path to the nomination could actually be conjured up in the mind's eye. This wasn't just about fanatics anymore. Regular people sensed a rare and historic moment.

The Sanders campaign has announced that they will report $26 million for the third quarter, just $2 million less than Clinton’s people say she will report (Republican outsider Ben Carson will report a similarly amazing $20 million). There's still a significant gap in their total funds, but a $26 million quarter means Bernie is a live candidate and that even more people in the I like the guy but can he win crowd are likely to jump on the bus. He’s achieved what you might call critical mass.

Why?

Overall, this is one of the weakest fields Democrats have ever assembled, or at least since 1988. Most people couldn’t even list a third person in the race. Who is Martin O’Malley, who is James Webb, who is Lincoln Chafee? None of them are on the radar in terms of polls, media attention, support or fundraising. None of them have a chance against the Clinton machine. They are straw candidates at the very most.

Why is Clinton so vulnerable? That’s easy and it’s not just servers and Benghazi. Despite her last name and even before her email scandal, Hillary Clinton was a polarizing figure who, even with a vice-like lock on the Democratic institution and an almost religiously devoted group of core supporters, has never managed to appeal to a broad audience and brings out rabid opposition whose enthusiasm, at the very least, equals that of her base supporters.

Hillary is the establishment candidate if there ever was one, and every time Democrats nominate that candidate (John Kerry, Al Gore, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis) they tend to lose. When they nominate the person running against the mainstream of the party (President Obama, Bill Clinton, President Carter) they tend to win. And when they fail to follow their heart and shun the Howard Deans of their party, they usually live to regret it.

There is no question that Bernie Sanders is the most off-the-approved-script Democrat the party has seen in quite some time. Even Dennis Kucinich was a bit more mainstream than the Bern. Yet Kucinich was viewed as too liberal to have a chance and couldn’t crack 15 percent, and here’s Senator Sanders knocking on the front door of the nomination.

Timing is everything.

2016 is undoubtedly an outlier year. It’s a year when money doesn’t seem to matter nearly as much, conventional wisdom has been thrown out the window, and candidates of all stripes and ideologies seem to have a shot as long as they’re not the one thing you used to have to be in order to have a shot: Coke or Pepsi Washington elites.

Where Donald Trump and Ben Carson are finding daylight on the right, Bernie Sanders is finding it on the left. Americans on both sides of the aisle seem so sick and tired of Washington politics that they only want to be assured of one thing: they won’t get more of the same.

Party darlings all seem cursed by the notion of what can and can’t happen in on the hill. In Washington, terms like not politically viable, not in an election year, a political hot potato, etc. are thrown around ad nauseam to explain why the most obvious solutions to our biggest problems simply can’t be employed. Americans have grown oh so tired of being told by the only people who can fix things, that they can’t — and only because of each other.

Trump bombastically announces that he doesn’t care, he’ll get it done, it’s gonna be HUGE and the crowd goes wild.

For his part, Sanders has been telling people that we can fix this or that, fix it now and that he’s ready to cut through the political blockages for his entire political career—and he’s been shaming his fellow legislators for not getting on board.

When asked how he will cut through the gridlock, Senator Sanders points to the people in the large crowds. He tells his supporters that he doesn’t only need their help now, but that he’ll need it even more on the day he’s sworn in. When asked how he’ll get a Republican House Speaker to compromise, he says he’ll tell him to look out his window and see the 10,000 Americans holding up signs proclaiming their demand for change.

Sanders says that President Obama’s biggest mistake was abandoning his grassroots supporters once he got into office, that they carried him to victory only to be told, “I’ll take it from here,” once he’d gotten behind the desk in the oval office, where the typical political insiders began to hold sway. But President Obama was a moderate and very much institutional politician. Whatever others allowed themselves to project onto him isn’t really his fault. His presidency has gone largely as promised.

Sanders, on the other hand, is a true believer and he’s made more than vague assertions and is campaigning on more than rhetoric. The numbers are also on his side. In the last two years, 99 percent of all new income created in the United States has gone to the top one percent of wage earners, while the top 15 wealthiest Americans have pocketed an unbelievable $170 billion between them.

Americans have experienced more than a decade of ultra-low taxes on the mega-rich, corporate taxes grossly skewed in favor of large multi-national corporations and away from mom and pop small businesses. The promise that lavishing so much wealth on so very few would in turn make everyone much better off never came to be, while the prophecy of those like Sanders who said that all such policies would do is further enrich the very few at the very top at the expense of everyone else is kicking Americans in the teeth every single day.

The cost of college continues to skyrocket, while more and more young Americans are crippled by student debt. Fewer Americans lack access to health insurance than anytime in the last 30 years thanks to Obamacare, but the cost of our for-profit health care system continues to rise far faster than largely stagnant wages. Unemployment is down, but poverty rates sit at record highs.

The economic policies of George W. Bush, which were largely followed by President Obama, will have had 16 years to pay off by the time voters go to the polls next November. Defending mostly keeping them in place if you’re Hillary, or largely doubling down on aggressive tax cuts for the ultra-rich if you’re anyone on the other side of the aisle, will be a difficult sell to most Americans.

Bernie’s got a massive number of people at his back, but will enough Americans (or even Democrats) ultimately get (and stay) behind him in order to try something new? Personally, I think if he could somehow get Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Senator that is even more popular with progressives than Sanders, to commit to being his running mate before the early contests, the nomination race would be over. Only time will tell, but one thing seems clear. The idea that a Jeb vs. Hillary presidential election was all but inevitable has been thrown on its ear.

