When I crossed paths with a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty cam­paign con­sul­tant in Austin last March, I sug­gest­ed he come out to the local Inter­na­tion­al Broth­er­hood of Elec­tri­cal Work­ers hall to hear Bernie Sanders, adding that the Ver­mont sen­a­tor was pon­der­ing a run for the presidency.

“You got­ta be kid­din’ me,” the polit­i­cal pro snort­ed. ​“Bernie Sanders? Let me tell ya, his chances are slim and none, and Slim don’t live in Bernie’s precinct. First of all, no one south of Green­wich Vil­lage ever heard of him. Sec­ond, who’s gonna vote for some old sen­a­tor from a tiny state of Birken­stock-wear­ers damn near in Canada?”

So that scoffer was a no-show, but we real­ly did­n’t have room for him any­way. We had expect­ed about 200 peo­ple — the capac­i­ty of the hall — but near­ly 500 Tex­ans showed up that night to hear the undi­lut­ed pop­ulist mes­sage of this sen­a­tor ​“no one ever heard of.”

Austin was one of the first stops on a cross-coun­try trip that Sanders was tak­ing to assess whether an unabashed­ly pro­gres­sive, move­ment-build­ing pres­i­den­tial cam­paign could ral­ly any sub­stan­tial sup­port. If he ran, he intend­ed to go right at the mon­eyed elites who’ve thor­ough­ly cor­rupt­ed our pol­i­tics and rigged our econ­o­my to squeeze the life out of the mid­dle class. But, would any­one fol­low? Were peo­ple real­ly ready to do this, and could a 74-year-old, noto­ri­ous­ly brusque Ver­mon­ter with a con­spic­u­ous Brook­lyn accent be the one to spark such a mod­ern-day Amer­i­can revolt? He was­n’t sure, and even if it might work, he assumed it would be a slow build.

I was to intro­duce him at the Austin event, and as we worked our way from the park­ing lot, wav­ing to an ebul­lient over­flow group gath­ered out­side the union build­ing, shak­ing hands with peo­ple stand­ing all along the hall­way and up the stair­well, then squeez­ing through the jam-packed crowd in the audi­to­ri­um — I said to him: ​“Some­thing is hap­pen­ing here.” He nod­ded and said in an aston­ished whis­per, ​“Some­thing is happening.”

That was a pre­cur­sor to what would soon become the ​“Sanders Sen­sa­tion,” a spon­ta­neous, unusu­al­ly vibrant grass­roots upris­ing that has already shat­tered the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Estab­lish­men­t’s holy myth that cor­po­rate cen­trism and super PAC mon­ey are the only means to vic­to­ry. Stu­pen­dous crowds are stream­ing into are­nas all around the coun­try to hear Sanders’ fact-stud­ded speech­es (which are more like ardent tuto­ri­als on democ­ra­cy than rah-rah stump speech­es). Not only are peo­ple sign­ing up for his pop­ulist call to action, but hun­dreds of thou­sands of enthu­si­asts are also pitch­ing in small dona­tions (aver­ag­ing under $30 each) to self-finance a viable, mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar cam­paign that can go the distance.

For me though, the great dif­fer­ence in this effort is that grass­roots peo­ple them­selves are tak­ing charge — not leav­ing it to estab­lish­ment office hold­ers and par­ty oper­a­tives to do the same old thing, From ral­lies of 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 peo­ple (as Don­ald Trump would say, these events are tru­ly ​“Huu­u­uge!”) to the local cam­paign com­mit­tees that have sprung up across the coun­try like hardy spring wild­flow­ers, most of the faces are new, fresh, and excited.

Sure, many pro­gres­sive old-timers are drawn to his mav­er­ick run, as are a cadre of expe­ri­enced orga­niz­ers, but the dri­ving force of ​“Bernie for Pres­i­dent” is com­ing from two encour­ag­ing sources: (1) An emerg­ing rain­bow of young peo­ple dis­mayed and dis­gust­ed by the greed and pet­ti­ness of today’s ​“lead­ers” who are restruc­tur­ing Amer­i­ca into a plu­toc­ra­cy that cal­lous­ly sweeps the cry­ing needs of the declin­ing mid­dle class, the poor, the plan­et, and the com­mon good under the rug of lais­sez-faire Kochism; and (2) a poten­tial­ly game-chang­ing group of work­ing class mad-as-hellers who had dis­en­gaged from a gov­ern­ing sys­tem that has delib­er­ate­ly ignored work­ing stiffs or, worse, cyn­i­cal­ly used them as polit­i­cal pawns to be demo­nized and disempowered.

Sanders’ pop­ulist surge nat­u­ral­ly intrigues a wide range of free-think­ing, truth-seek­ing vot­ers, but we are being warned by the Demo­c­ra­t­ic hier­ar­chy that the only way to ward off the Hal­loween hor­ror of a Don­ald Trump-Ted Cruz pres­i­den­cy is to set aside our pop­ulist ide­al­ism this year and stick with Barack Oba­ma-style, don’t-rock-the-cor­po­rate-boat lib­er­al­ism offer­ing small-step reforms. That’s not exact­ly a turn-on for the major­i­ty of peo­ple fed up with busi­ness-as-usu­al pol­i­tics — which is why so many Amer­i­cans are hitch­ing their pop­ulist hopes to Sanders’ peo­ple-pow­ered movement.