Late last semester, a student showed up during my office hours. She sat down across from me, looking worried. I assumed she wanted to discuss her upcoming paper, but she had something else in mind. “Professor,” she said. “How did Donald Trump happen?”

This is the question everyone seems to be asking these days. Trump’s rise has defied the predictions of pundits and pollsters, repeatedly embarrassing those who swore that he would flame out. I’m a political scientist, and I count myself among that number. In September, I offered my students a $500 bet that he wouldn’t become the Republican nominee — a wager I’m increasingly glad that none of them took me up on.

But while the magnitude of Trump’s victory has come as a surprise to many, it has also made for an incredibly exciting time to teach political science. This isn’t just for the immense attention Trump’s campaign has suddenly brought to the most obscure corners of the democratic process, or how anxious it makes my students. It’s because Donald Trump has provided high-profile, living disproof of some of the most familiar myths of American politics.

You’ve heard them too: “Voters have become extreme,” or “This mistake could end his campaign,” or “Obama’s success has shown that race doesn’t matter”—all pieces of warmed-over analysis that political scientists no longer take seriously. For years, I’ve relied on academic studies to demonstrate just how incorrect these clichés are. Now, I can point to a much more viscerally compelling piece of evidence; His name is Donald Trump.