The other good thing about Iowa is that there are two fascinating races taking place. A year ago, it seemed like Hillary Clinton could have conducted her campaign Skyping in from a yacht off the Bahamas and still breeze through Iowa. Bernie Sanders has robbed her of that luxury. The race is remarkably close. Sanders could easily win.

Hillary Clinton is being challenged in ways that she likely never imagined. Life for her must sometimes seem like a long string of torments. She lost in 2008, waited patiently for nearly a decade, rose up again to claim her prize and found it stubbornly elusive once more. She’s never quite able to make it her moment. She’s always found wanting. Much of this is her own doing—she is a hyper-hawkish Wall Street ally who’s championed disastrous, racist criminal justice and welfare policies, and can probably be counted on to sell a string of people out, after all. But some of it must surely rest on the fact that she is a 69-year-old woman running for the presidency. Women have it harder. You don’t have to love Hillary Clinton to see that.

Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, has seized his moment with unbelievable gusto. It’s true that his rise has been confined to the Democratic primary, a little hothouse where he can thrive. Also, he’s a man, which definitely helps. In retrospect, though, it would have been very strange if the kinds of ruptures happening across the world didn’t assert themselves in some form in the American political system. There’s been lots of talk of “anti-establishment” politics in the U.S., but this is not the only country on the planet. The West has seen huge amounts of political turmoil. And why not? Inequality is raging. The planet is dying. Plutocracy is thriving. In Greece, in Spain, in Britain, in France, in Portugal, the grip of entrenched parties and politicians is being challenged at a peak of intensity not seen in decades. Why wouldn’t some version of that happen in the United States?