For the past three decades, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has been liv­ing with a debil­i­tat­ing trau­ma that’s left it a shell of what it once was. But if Tues­day night’s debate is any indi­ca­tion, the Democ­rats may final­ly be mov­ing into the home stretch of a long, painful recovery.

Both Sanders and Warren tied signature policies like Medicare for All, a wealth tax, free tertiary education and student debt cancellation to their broader vision of political change, rebuking Democrats’ three-decade-long strategy of scurrying in fear at the sight of their own shadow.

Rather than stick­ing to the long­time script of Democ­rats pan­der­ing to the cen­ter, the two high­est polling can­di­dates on the stage — Bernie Sanders and Eliz­a­beth War­ren — artic­u­lat­ed a clear-eyed left-wing vision of the direc­tion the par­ty should take. Sanders railed against the ​“rul­ing class” while advo­cat­ing enshrin­ing uni­ver­sal eco­nom­ic rights, as War­ren warned that ​“we’re not going to solve the urgent prob­lems we face with small ideas and spine­less­ness.” Sanders agreed, claim­ing: ​“I get a lit­tle bit tired of Democ­rats afraid of big ideas.”

Ever since the Clin­ton years of the 1990s, the party’s offi­cials and appa­ratchiks have inter­nal­ized the belief that being too bold or too far left is a tick­et to polit­i­cal obliv­ion. After enjoy­ing a near-unbro­ken hold on the White House from 1932 to 1968, the fol­low­ing 24 years saw Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee after nom­i­nee go down in land­slides against ever more right-wing Repub­li­can oppo­nents. Peace can­di­date George McGov­ern, who called for pulling troops out of Viet­nam with­in 90 days in 1972, had been too far left to win, went the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom. So had Wal­ter Mon­dale and Michael Dukakis in 1984 and 1988, respec­tive­ly, con­ve­nient­ly ignor­ing the real­i­ty that both had cam­paigned as cen­trists pledg­ing to cut the deficit and reform welfare.

This set of lessons, com­bined with Bill Clinton’s two pres­i­den­tial vic­to­ries, led the par­ty to an increas­ing­ly ruinous set of choic­es. Clinton’s ​“tri­an­gu­la­tion” — col­lab­o­rat­ing with Repub­li­cans to dereg­u­late banks, cut social pro­grams and empow­er large finan­cial insti­tu­tions — helped hol­low out unions and work­ing-class sup­port for the par­ty, while set­ting the stage for the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis. The Democ­rats’ choice of safe ​“mod­er­ate” can­di­date John Ker­ry in 2004 saw a vul­ner­a­ble George W. Bush return to the White House for anoth­er four years. And Barack Oba­ma fin­ished the job Clin­ton had begun, with his fear of appear­ing too rad­i­cal or—heav­en for­bid—a ​“social­ist,” lead­ing to a less-than-aggres­sive response to the finan­cial cri­sis. This cri­sis, in turn, cre­at­ed a wipe­out of black work­ing-class wealth and a slug­gish eco­nom­ic recov­ery that helped Pres­i­dent Trump ride a wave of rage and apa­thy to the White House in 2016.

Par­a­lyzed by cau­tion, and its worst instincts jus­ti­fied through a grad­ual takeover by cor­po­rate inter­ests, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has in many ways been its own worst ene­my. Rather than propos­ing far-reach­ing redis­trib­u­tive poli­cies, nation­al Democ­rats have by and large moved to the right while push­ing means-test­ed, tepid pro­pos­als meant not to offend cor­po­rate back­ers or scare off myth­i­cal ​“Rea­gan Democ­rats.” The result has been a par­ty that’s failed to inspire its core con­stituen­cy — work­ing-class vot­ers — to show up at the polls. Just look at the Oba­ma years, dur­ing which the par­ty lost over 1,000 seats nationwide.

Yet Tues­day night’s bat­tle between, on one side, Sanders and War­ren — the two most pro­gres­sive can­di­dates in the field — and, on the oth­er, the con­ser­v­a­tive Democ­rats mis­lead­ing­ly labeled ​“mod­er­ates” by much of the media, sug­gest things may be final­ly changing.

The debate saw a con­ser­v­a­tive onslaught on the ideas of the party’s surg­ing left wing. Sanders and War­ren — both tri­bunes for pro­gres­sive pol­i­tics dur­ing the Oba­ma years — faced right-wing attacks and skep­ti­cism from not just their con­ser­v­a­tive oppo­nents, but CNN’s pan­el of mod­er­a­tors as well.

For­mer Mary­land Rep. John Delaney opened the debate by deri­sive­ly refer­ring to Sanders and Warren’s ​“bad poli­cies” and ​“impos­si­ble promis­es” of Medicare for All and ​“free every­thing,” ques­tion­ing why the Democ­rats were being ​“the par­ty of tak­ing some­thing away from peo­ple,” in this case, pri­vate health insur­ance. Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan sug­gest­ed that Sanders’ Medicare for All bill would make things worse for union mem­bers. For­mer Col­orado Gov. John Hick­en­loop­er stressed that incre­men­tal reform (“evo­lu­tion, not rev­o­lu­tion”) and giv­ing Amer­i­cans ​“choic­es” promised a bet­ter way for­ward. Mod­er­a­tor Jake Tap­per demand­ed to know if War­ren and Sanders planned on rais­ing tax­es for the mid­dle class.

The two sen­a­tors respond­ed com­bat­ive­ly, bat­ting away the attacks in an often fiery fash­ion. ​“I don’t under­stand why any­body goes to all the trou­ble of run­ning for pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States just to talk about what we real­ly can’t do and shouldn’t fight for,” an exas­per­at­ed War­ren told Delaney. ​“You’re wrong,” Sanders said, respond­ing to Delaney’s charge that Medicare for All was ​“polit­i­cal suicide.”

War­ren point­ed out to Hick­en­loop­er that incre­men­tal reforms had already been tried to no avail, and admon­ished the oth­er can­di­dates for ​“using Repub­li­can talk­ing points.” Sanders lev­eled the same accu­sa­tion at Tap­per before charg­ing that ​“the health care indus­try will be adver­tis­ing tonight on this pro­gram … with that talk­ing point,” a pre­dic­tion that came at least par­tial­ly true: PhRMA, the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal industry’s lob­by­ing arm, was one of a num­ber of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal enti­ties to air ads dur­ing sub­se­quent com­mer­cial breaks.

And this was all dur­ing just the first half-hour. Health­care reared its head again lat­er in the debate once the con­ver­sa­tion turned to immi­gra­tion, with the mod­er­a­tors sug­gest­ing that Sanders’ plan to allow undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants to access care under Medicare for All would encour­age a del­uge of migrants. A num­ber of oth­er ques­tions implied that Sanders was too rad­i­cal to beat Trump, or, as one put it, that he was indis­tin­guish­able from the far-right pres­i­dent because they both said they want­ed to end wars. At one point, the mod­er­a­tors pushed the can­di­dates to affirm they would main­tain the Unit­ed States’ first-use of nuclear weapons, a stance War­ren brave­ly reject­ed, par­al­lel­ing UK Labour leader Jere­my Corbyn’s own stance on the matter.

Per­haps most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, both Sanders and War­ren tied sig­na­ture poli­cies like Medicare for All, a wealth tax, free ter­tiary edu­ca­tion and stu­dent debt can­cel­la­tion to their broad­er vision of polit­i­cal change, rebuk­ing Democ­rats’ three-decade-long strat­e­gy of scur­ry­ing in fear at the sight of their own shad­ow. War­ren thun­dered that the Democ­rats need to be the par­ty ​“of big, struc­tur­al change.” Sanders argued that ​“to win this elec­tion and to defeat Don­ald Trump … we need to have a cam­paign of ener­gy and excite­ment and of vision. We need to bring mil­lions of young peo­ple into the polit­i­cal process in a way that we have nev­er seen.” For his part, Delaney fell back on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic establishment’s clas­sic warn­ing that McGovern’s 1972 loss showed mov­ing to the left was the elec­toral equiv­a­lent of drink­ing rat poison.

Mean­while, War­ren and Sanders’ crit­i­cisms of their con­ser­v­a­tive chal­lengers were root­ed in more than a ker­nel of truth. Sanders’ charge that Delaney, while oppos­ing Medicare for All, ​“made mon­ey off of health­care” wasn’t wrong. Besides being a con­ser­v­a­tive ​“New Demo­c­rat” who, while in the House, sup­port­ed the Trans-Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship and backed Obama’s enti­tle­ment-cut­ting Bowles-Simp­son com­mis­sion, Delaney was one of the rich­est mem­bers of Con­gress thanks to his career at the head of a com­pa­ny that lent mon­ey to the health­care sec­tor. As Sludge has report­ed, his lat­est finan­cial dis­clo­sure, filed in 2019, shows Delaney has $3.2 mil­lion invest­ed in the health­care sec­tor and funds with hold­ings in the industry.

The same goes for Warren’s sug­ges­tion that the can­di­dates assail­ing Medicare for All lacked the ​“polit­i­cal will” to fight for it, which Hick­en­loop­er emphat­i­cal­ly denied. Yet in 2016, as gov­er­nor of Col­orado, he — along with fel­low 2020 can­di­date, Col­orado Sen. Michael Ben­net — opposed Amend­ment 69, a bal­lot mea­sure that would have insti­tut­ed a sin­gle-pay­er sys­tem in the state. At the time, Hick­en­loop­er claimed that it was ​“pre­ma­ture” to reform the health­care sys­tem. Behind closed doors, he told the Col­orado Forum, an assem­bly of busi­ness lead­ers and polit­i­cal oper­a­tives that com­prised one of Colorado’s most pow­er­ful lob­bies, that a ​“cou­ple large health­care-relat­ed com­pa­nies that are look­ing at mov­ing their head­quar­ters to Col­orado” had ​“paused” when they learned about the measure.

While post-debate polling is still to come, it’s been clear that the unam­bi­tious, con­ser­v­a­tive approach cham­pi­oned by fig­ures like Delaney and Hick­en­loop­er is no longer wel­come among the Demo­c­ra­t­ic grass­roots. Both can­di­dates were booed at the Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­ven­tion this year for rebuk­ing sin­gle-pay­er health­care and social­ism. In most polls, both can­di­dates are rank­ing some­where between 0 and 1 per­cent. Hick­en­loop­er, whose cam­paign began hem­or­rhag­ing staff in ear­ly July, recent­ly cel­e­brat­ed tri­umphant­ly when he hit a mere 2 per­cent, in one of this election’s most unin­ten­tion­al­ly hilar­i­ous tweets so far: ​“You did this. This cam­paign is gain­ing seri­ous momen­tum and we’re just get­ting started.”

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party’s recov­ery from their 30-year trau­ma isn’t over yet. After all, Joe Biden, one of the orig­i­nal neolib­er­al Democ­rats who aban­doned the New Deal in the 1980s and is cur­rent­ly run­ning a cam­paign based on attack­ing Medicare for All while being lav­ished with cor­po­rate mon­ey, is still the frontrunner.

But War­ren and Sanders’ per­for­mance in Tues­day night’s debate, cou­pled with the crowd’s rau­cous cheers for their defi­ant retorts to the party’s with­er­ing con­ser­v­a­tive wing, hints that the heal­ing process is well underway.