What always disappointed me the most about President Obama was how he never even tried to change the language of politics that had been established in the eight years of the Bush presidency.

From immigration (on which he never articulated a different rhetoric than the punitive law-and-order one put into effect by his predecessor) to civil liberties to war crimes to inequality to health care to race relations to trade, he has kept to the establishment line on all substantive policy issues.

And that’s where Bernie Sanders has succeeded so brilliantly. Sanders has managed to draw level with Hillary Clinton in the national polls, and seriously threatens to upset the carefully balanced apple cart if he can pull out a win in New York. As a result, he has pushed the establishment to acknowledge, at least rhetorically, the grievances of the powerless. That is no mean accomplishment, and he and his supporters should feel proud for having come this far.

I do not of course mean this in the dismissive way deployed by Clinton and the rest of the “establishment” (the term Sanders repeatedly uses to describe her and which irks her so much), to pat Sanders and his followers on the back, as if to say, Job well done, now go home and let the adults take over, you’ve had your chance at saying what you needed to say but now we need to get on with the job we were doing before. Indeed, toward the end of the debate tonight, as Clinton became increasingly nervous—her shrill bluster and bravado seemed to have collapsed by the end, as Sanders only seemed to gain in confidence and grit—that is precisely the rhetorical tactic Clinton used against him.

No, it’s not going to work now, things have changed, we have moved past the likes of Debbie Wasserman Schultz pushing the debates to ungodly weekend hours, pretending that there was never a split among liberals as severe as that among conservatives.

This debate was a sign of the distance Sanders has traveled in confidence and maturity, the way he handled all of her maddening lies—particularly about misusing his congressional voting record in the absurd way of political commercials—by insisting on the facts. The facts are all we need, but we have not been hearing them on such a visible platform in a long time, President Obama also being firmly in the mode of equivocating establishment-speak, which fuzzes up clear-cut issues of unequal treatment and distracts attention to pragmatism and “competence” (of course the neoliberal banker in a politician’s suit is the only one who’s competent).

It was a joy to witness the establishment standing denuded tonight. There were actually two other dignitaries—Bill Clinton and Barack Obama—who stood behind Hillary Clinton, on this night when the hypocrisies of the powerful stood exposed on the national stage. Using the kind of hardcore logic and rationality that went out of style after Walter Mondale’s unsuccessful deployment of the same against warm fuzzy Ronald Reagan, but which made a brief appearance when Joe Biden went head to head against Paul Ryan, Sanders didn’t let Clinton get away with her prevarication on a single point. And of course she equivocated and feinted right and left and diverted attention and raised false alarms in response to every single question.

Again and again, Clinton attempted to subdue every sharp query that came her way by speaking in praise of the incremental measures she intends to take toward what she has now taken to calling her own “bold” ideas, such as raising the minimum wage in steps by way of getting to the progressive goal of $15 an hour. She mocked the idea of free college by offering her father’s homely wisdom that one should “read the fine print” when something is offered for free. But Sanders never let her get away, and neither did the moderators, to their credit. In contrast to previous debates, certainly in recent election cycles, the debate remained firmly grounded in facts rather than distractions, fears, and absurd hypotheticals, which by itself is a notable shift in consciousness.

As the debate wore on, the contradictions in Clinton’s attempt to square the circle became more and more evident. Sanders had worn her down so greatly, with the gentlemanly demeanor she so clearly despises, that he had to do less and less work to expose her lies. He would simply shake his head, roll his eyes in disbelief, while Clinton seemed to dig ever deeper holes for herself.