In urging my apolitical son to support the Sanders campaign when it launched last spring, I pointed out that sometimes a long shot is your best shot — and further, that while the Sanders/Clinton smackdown would be a clash of David and Goliath-scale asymmetries, Sanders knew something establishment politicians like Clinton seemed vaguely aware of at best: that for years there’d been a revolution smoldering across the land — from Zuccotti Park to the streets of Baltimore — and the only missing element was a leader who could focus and catalyze that insurgent energy. And though Sanders didn’t have Clinton’s billionaire backing, he did have a big ugly rock in his sling: the truth — the simple, in-your-face truth — that billionaires, in fact, had hijacked the political process and were selling the rest of us down the river. With Sanders wielding his blunt, uncompromising honesty on a national stage, I assured my son, 2016 would be a whole different kind of election.

For the remainder of 2015, of course, the combined efforts of the DNC and the establishment media kept Bernie’s appearances on the national stage to a minimum. But now that the first caucuses and primaries of the 2016 campaign season are upon us and voters are really scrutinizing the candidates, Sanders is surging — while an increasingly shaky Clinton keeps reminding me why I found her so offensive in 2008: I hate being lied to. And judging by Madame Secretary’s eroding numbers, it’s a fair guess I’m not alone.

It’s telling that a political heavyweight like Clinton remains oblivious to the fact that lying is a strategy better suited to a right-wing constituency, where critical thinking evokes fear and loathing, and voters are liable to believe anything. The conservative sensibilities she can’t conceal serve as a reminder that Team Clinton occupies a center-left position on the political spectrum only because the political spectrum has been warped beyond all recognition in recent decades.

But casually tossing off lies — especially stupid lies — with genuine liberals and progressives is just asking for trouble. Chris Mooney, in his book The Republican Brain, makes the point that conservatives and liberals are wired differently — they care about different things. And one of the things liberals care very much about is factual accuracy. According to Mooney, “They like to think, in an effortful and self-challenging way, and take pride in doing a good job of it. They enjoy complex problems and trying to solve them.” They’re exactly the kind of people, in short, who’ll just get pissed off if a candidate tries to fool them into thinking single-payer would increase healthcare costs or strip millions of their coverage (to take a particularly offensive example), or that the staggering fortune heaped on said candidate by her intimate Wall Street friends holds no sway over her policy prescriptions — or for that matter, that Bernie Sanders is unelectable despite polls showing he’s the most electable candidate in either party.

But a candidate shouldn’t need a focus group to know that a sure way to drive down ratings is to tell stupid lies to the kind of voters who pay attention and connect the dots — because it disrespects them and insults their intelligence. That Clinton does this reflexively tends to support Bernie’s argument that for all her much-lauded experience in policymaking and public affairs, her judgment leaves a lot to be desired.

But in fairness, that rock in Bernie’s sling would unnerve most any establishment politician earnestly hawking the status quo. It embodies the self-evident truths Sanders refuses to set aside: that an economy should work for everyone, not just an anointed few; that the primary purpose of government is to serve the needs of people — not those of banks and multinationals; that money is not speech and corporations are not persons; that in failing to provide its citizens with universal healthcare, tuition-free education, a decent safety net, and world-class infrastructure like other developed nations, the self-proclaimed “richest nation in the history of the world” reveals itself instead to be an increasingly impoverished, corrupt, dysfunctional republic that happens to be home to some fabulously wealthy individuals (who mostly keep their money offshore).

But what gives that big ugly rock the heft it’ll take to smash the status quo is the reality that, broadly speaking, most people seem to want the same sort of world for themselves and their children that Sanders wants for his, and their surging support for his campaign demonstrates a growing willingness to stand up and fight for it. And when willingness meets resistance, it becomes determination as often as not — and you can count on the establishment resisting The Bern with everything it’s got.

But as the propaganda hits the fan and untold treachery plays out behind the scenes, we can hope the powers that be have the good sense to remember the words of our 35th president:

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable” — JFK