That could muffle the contest’s impact: Though Scala, like many strategists already working on the race, considers it highly likely that New Hampshire will settle the competition between Sanders and Warren, if other candidates, the media, and voters in subsequent states downplay the New Hampshire results, that would dilute the state’s traditional role in winnowing the field. And that would increase the odds that three or more candidates could remain viable well into the primary process—a dynamic Democrats have not experienced since the 1980s.

But for all his influence, Sanders still faces huge obstacles in his second bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. Key among them is a history of resistance in 2016 from core groups in the party, including African Americans and voters who identify as partisan Democrats.

Read: Bernie Sanders is the Democratic front-runner

Sanders this week quickly demonstrated his greatest asset as a candidate: a passionate grassroots following that includes a massive base of small-dollar online donors. On Wednesday he reported that, in the first 24 hours after his announcement, he raised nearly $6 million online, far more than any of his rivals did after entering the race. He’s in a stronger position than in 2016, too, in the internal party debate. As Sanders noted in his announcement-day interview with CBS, more of the Democratic Party’s leaders, including several of his 2020 competitors, have moved toward positions he took in the last presidential campaign, supporting a single-payer health-care system and free four-year public college. “All of those ideas and many more are now part of the political mainstream,” Sanders crowed during the interview.

It’s unquestionable that more Democrats are supporting those ideas than when Sanders aired them in 2016. But all the policies remain contested: Klobuchar, for one, has already rejected both single-payer and free tuition. Other potential candidates targeting more moderate voters, such as Biden and several former governors eyeing the race, would be almost certain to follow. (It’s also worth noting that the Democratic-controlled House is unlikely to pass legislation on either matter.) Even some of the candidates who have echoed Sanders’s overall goals are likely to challenge some of his specific proposals as unaffordable or excessive, as Booker has done by rejecting Sanders’s call to virtually eliminate private health insurance.

In other words, Sanders hasn’t won the war of ideas in the party nearly as much as he’s suggested. In fact, he’s virtually certain to face tougher scrutiny over his agenda than he did in 2016, when Clinton made the misguided strategic choice not to criticize his proposals as undesirable or unaffordable, but only as unlikely to pass Congress. Sanders probably won’t receive such deference again.