2016 Bernie Sanders to DNC: You've got to change Presidential candidate says Democrats need to run an exciting 2016 campaign or they'll lose again.

Bernie Sanders, a self-declared democratic socialist whose insurgency candidacy has shaken up the 2016 race and given front-runner Hillary Clinton a shot of competition, walked into the den of the Democratic Party establishment Friday and delivered a blunt message: You’ve been doing it all wrong.

“When I announced my candidacy less than four months ago, I think that it’s fair to say that few took our campaign seriously,” the independent Vermont senator, who is not registered as a Democrat, told a crowd packed with his supporters.


“But a lot has changed in these last few months,” he said, going on to detail the grass-roots enthusiasm his campaign has seen on the trail, drawing “some of the largest crowds of this campaign, including young and working-class people.

Then he told the assembled delegates at the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting in Minneapolis exactly how the party, of which he is not a member, came to lose last November’s midterm elections.

“The Democrats lost that election because voter turnout was abysmally low, and millions of working people, people of color and young people gave up on ‘politics as usual’ and stayed home,” he declared.

Speaking in the heart of the Democratic establishment, Sanders called for a movement taking on the economic and political establishment, “not one of which is part of it.”

“With all due respect, and I do not mean to insult anyone here, that turnout, that enthusiasm will not happen with politics as usual,” Sanders said, punctuated by supporters’ chants of “Ber-nie! Ber-nie!”

In fact, Sanders said, the party is in for a repeat unless it changes its ways.

“Let me be very clear. In my view, Democrats will not retain the White House, will not regain the Senate, will not gain the House and will not be successful in dozens of governor’s races unless we run a campaign which generates excitement and momentum and which produces a huge voter turnout,” the senator said.

Including himself with the “we,” Sanders predicted, “We are going to create an unprecedented grass-roots movement which taps into the American people’s desire for real change in this country.”