Democratic socialism’s ascent mirrors Barry Goldwater’s rise.

History will undoubtedly remember 2016 as the moment America entered the tumultuous Donald Trump era. But as left-leaning populists rack up victories in Democratic primaries, it also may be remembered as a new generation’s 1964: the moment a senator at the fringe of his party lost a presidential bid but ignited a revolution that changed the country.

Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential bid touched off the conservative movement that fully took over the Republican Party in the decades that followed. Now, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign is reverberating through the Democratic Party in the same way.

It might seem counterintuitive to compare Goldwater and Sanders. The former was a quasi-libertarian who ran for president promising to roll back the New Deal, oppose government health care, dismantle Social Security, lower taxes and use military force aggressively. The latter is a self-described socialist who envisioned the restoration of New Deal politics, including government-sponsored health care, expanded Social Security and higher taxes on the rich.

But there are remarkable similarities nonetheless. Goldwater and Sanders are both iconoclasts whose glasses, shocks of gray-white hair and prickly demeanors forged an image remembered long after their campaigns. Both lost their races, Sanders in the Democratic primary, Goldwater in the general election. And most important: Both devoted themselves to their movements long after their presidential bids.

Crusading against his party’s liberal wing and its torchbearer, New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller (R), Goldwater in 1964 harnessed support from conservatives alienated from a GOP establishment they viewed as too cozy with the New Deal consensus. He became an icon thanks to his uncompromising posture, including his declaration that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice … [and] moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

When Goldwater lost 44 states, his defeat was cast as the final nail in the coffin of the conservative movement. “Goldwater not only lost the Presidential election yesterday but the conservative cause as well,” wrote James Reston of the New York Times. “He has wrecked his party for a long time to come.” And yet, the GOP won five out of the next six presidential elections. That included the 1980 romp by Goldwater’s most famous campaign surrogate, Ronald Reagan — who as president quickly made good on promises of tax cuts and deregulation.

What’s more, Goldwater-style conservatives began winning power in Congress. Liberal Republican senators were unseated in primaries by conservative challengers. In just four years, Republicans wiped out Senate Democrats’ 1976 supermajority, winning control of the upper chamber in 1980. Soon after, Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia launched his insurgency against the GOP’s moderate House leadership.

The rest, as they say, is history — a history that may now be rhyming.

Like Goldwater’s campaign, Sanders’s 2016 presidential bid was powered by a grassroots insurgency — against his adopted party’s establishment and its anointed nominee, Hillary Clinton. Just as Goldwater inspired young conservatives, Sanders’s indictment of oligarchy, wealth inequality and corporate power was a political awakening moment for a generation of disillusioned voters on the left.

And a decade after his loss, the seeds Sanders sowed appear to be bearing the kind of political fruit that Goldwater’s bore.

As the affordability crisis, Middle East wars and Trump’s corruption affirm so many of Sanders’s policy critiques, the midterm elections are being shaped by an antiestablishment zeitgeist. Already, four incumbent House Democrats have lost primaries to more progressive challengers. In contested open-seat House primaries, another eight progressives have defeated establishment-aligned opponents. In contested Democratic Senate primaries, Michigan public health official Abdul El-Sayed, Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon ran Sanders-style races and beat establishment-backed candidates.

Heading into the 2028 presidential election, two of the party’s most influential power brokers are Sanders acolytes: New York progressives Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The latter is competitive in early Democratic presidential primary polls, which could feature other left-leaning candidates such as Rep. Ro Khanna (California) in competition for the Sanders lane.

That such a lane even exists spotlights the most significant Goldwater analog: Just as the Arizona senator’s conservatism became Republican Party orthodoxy, Sanders’s anti-oligarch politics is becoming mainstream across the Democratic Party.

In the South, Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff and Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico echo Sanders’s jeremiads against big money in politics. In the Midwest, Sanders ally Sherrod Brown leads in polls in his bid to retake a Senate seat in Ohio. In rural districts, blue dog Democrats sound like Sanders as they tout tax hikes on the rich and offer a tough critique of corporate abuses.

All that said, it’s not clear that the Sanders movement will unfold on the same timetable as the Goldwater-to-Reagan cycle. And there is no guarantee the populist Democratic insurgency will culminate in a White House victory.

Goldwater’s coalition benefited from its alignment with wealthy interests that stood to gain from the movement’s anti-tax, deregulatory agenda. By contrast, Sanders’s movement challenges those powerful political forces and faces a corporate Democratic faction pledging to spend millions to thwart it.

Should populist primary winners go on to lose their general elections, the Democrats’ corporate wing will argue those defeats prove that Sanders-aligned candidates cannot be trusted to win. They know how much is stake: If Sanders and his allies complete their own Goldwater-style revolution, corporate Democrats could go the way of the dinosaurs, the dodo and old-style liberal Republicans.