Trump can win.

That statement might seem simple, but at this time last year it was virtually untenable. Donald Trump was the cook, the crackpot, the crazy uncle at your six-year-old’s birthday party who showed up a little too intoxicated and talked a little too much about his experience with extraterrestrials and secret societies. And while the Republican nominee might still be all those things, he’s also now within striking distance of the Oval Office.

In a culmination of things, Donald Trump has pulled within less than a percentage point of Hillary Clinton in popular vote projection averages in both a head-to-head race featuring just the two candidates and in a four-way race featuring Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein. This is the closest margin between the two candidates since the conclusion of each party’s convention back in July. In the time between Hillary Clinton has usually commanded double digit leads over Trump in the national polls, but recent questions over her health, including an official diagnosis of pneumonia before the onset of the weekend, have sent the former Secretary of State reeling.

To add injury to insult, Donald Trump has overtaken Clinton in a multitude of state polls, winning on the ground in Florida, Ohio, and Iowa. The latest polls in Nevada and Colorado also show Trump with narrow leads.

So what does it all mean?

Most news outlets have downplayed the shift as nothing but a temporary annoyance spurred on by Clinton’s illness. In truth, the shift in the polls seems much more dramatic than voters suddenly being concerned about Clinton’s health, despite evidence for weeks that the candidate was not in an operable state of fitness. Whatever the actual cause behind the shift, the timing couldn’t be more impeccable for Trump. Recent terrorist attacks in New York, New Jersey, and Minnesota are likely to bolster his calls for a hardline stance against ISIS and other foreign jihadist entities, a stance that Clinton is unwilling to make. For better or for worse, Trump is seen as the anti-terror candidate and as unsavory as it might be to exploit the recent attacks in St. Cloud and on the East Coast, it’s sure to work in his favor.

Also the first presidential debate is set to kickoff on September 26^th, and if Clinton and Trump ride into the debates running as closely as they are now, everything is wide open. While it’s true that the presidential debates don’t hold nearly the same sway over voter determination as in decades passed (especially with the ever-growing crowd of millennials) there is no denying that they are still an incredibly pivotal moment in the election cycle and serve as much as a type of theater as anything else.

Thus far this year, Donald Trump has been the king of political theater, and something tells me that a boisterous and red-faced Trump, no matter how loud and obnoxious he might be, will be much more the spectacle to see in juxtaposition to an ailing Hillary Clinton.

Now this doesn’t mean that Trump is certain to win. Real Clear Politics still gives only a 32% chance that the New York businessman will take home the grand prize. But his momentum has certainly opened up paths for him that were nearly nonexistent weeks ago. Winning the crucial swing states of Ohio and Florida are critical to the success of Trump’s campaign, and his success in Iowa (which has gone for every Democrat since Reagan, minus Bush in 2004) brings him to within a reasonable shot at 270 necessary electoral votes to win in November.

Far from having gained my endorsement or my support, there is no denying that Clinton’s very bad week and Trump’s bravado has suddenly made this race worth watching—as if any of us ever stopped.