Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.) returned to Iowa on Sat­ur­day for the first time since 2016 and brought the house down dur­ing a keynote speech in front of more than 1,000 com­mu­ni­ty activists.

Sanders’ speech had all the hallmarks of a campaign rally.

His vis­it to the ear­ly vot­ing swing state fueled nation­wide spec­u­la­tion that Sanders may run for pres­i­dent again in 2020, a pos­si­bil­i­ty he has not denied.

Sanders’ appear­ance in the corn state on Sat­ur­day was orga­nized by Iowa Cit­i­zens for Com­mu­ni­ty Improve­ment (CCI) Action Fund as part of their annu­al con­ven­tion, ​“Rev­o­lu­tion Iowa: From Protest to Pow­er.” Iowa CCI is a pop­ulist com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tion with more than 4,000 mem­bers. The group has had a rela­tion­ship with Sanders since 2014.

Long­time CCI lead­ers opened their con­ven­tion Sat­ur­day morn­ing with call-and-response chants. By the time Sanders appeared Sat­ur­day after­noon, the crowd had swelled from 800 peo­ple to more than 1,000. Late in the day, CCI staff announced they had raised more than $30,000 from con­ven­tion goers dur­ing a fundrais­ing pitch moments before Sanders walked on stage.

Chants of ​“Bernie! Bernie!” rocked the con­ven­tion hall when the self-described demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist sen­a­tor final­ly grasped the podium.

Sanders’ speech had all the hall­marks of a cam­paign ral­ly. He thanked his local sup­port­ers and called for a polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion against the oli­garchy, bil­lion­aire class and one per­cent. He railed against Cit­i­zens Unit­ed, strict vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion laws and cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change. And he spoke at length about the his­toric fight of African-Amer­i­cans, women, immi­grants, and LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ties for equal rights.

Sanders also ham­mered Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and the GOP on their bill to repeal the Afford­able Care Act, as he did recent­ly in sim­i­lar trips to Ken­tucky and West Vir­ginia. If passed, the ​“Oba­macare” repeal would throw mil­lions of peo­ple off health insur­ance, cut Med­ic­aid and turn over mil­lions of dol­lars in tax cuts to the wealthy and big corporations.

“When Don­ald Trump ran for pres­i­dent, he told the peo­ple of Iowa, the peo­ple of Ver­mont, the peo­ple of this coun­try, that he was going to stand with the work­ing class, but he is cur­rent­ly sup­port­ing the most anti-work­ing class leg­is­la­tion ever pre­sent­ed in the mod­ern his­to­ry of this coun­try, a dis­as­trous health care bill that will come before the Sen­ate soon,” Sanders said.

Sanders told the crowd that a 60-year-old work­er in Des Moines mak­ing $40,000 a year could see their annu­al health insur­ance costs increase from $400 to $8,000.

“Med­ic­aid pays about two thirds of the fund­ing for those peo­ple who are in nurs­ing homes,” he emphasized.

“So, I say to the peo­ple of Iowa, if you have a mom or dad who is in a nurs­ing home, what hap­pens when Med­ic­aid is severe­ly cut and those peo­ple are forced out of their nurs­ing homes?” Sanders con­tin­ued. ​“Who will take care of them? What hap­pens to their lives?”

“Our imme­di­ate test, as we go on to health care, is to defeat this hor­rif­ic leg­is­la­tion,” Sanders said. ​“But as soon as we accom­plish that, I will be intro­duc­ing leg­is­la­tion which has gained more and more sup­port all across this coun­try, leg­is­la­tion for a Medicare for All, sin­gle-pay­er system.”

Sanders is increas­ing­ly seen as the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty fron­trun­ner in 2020, but his rela­tion­ship with the par­ty is com­pli­cat­ed and full of con­flict. Many of his sup­port­ers believe the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee stacked the deck against him dur­ing his pri­ma­ry bat­tle with Hillary Clin­ton last year. A Clin­ton sup­port­er is now chal­leng­ing Sanders for his Ver­mont Sen­ate seat.

“The cur­rent strat­e­gy of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty is an absolute fail­ure,” Sanders said at the People’s Sum­mit in Chica­go in June, where he called for a pro­gres­sive takeover of the party.

But Sanders also gave the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee (DNC) $100,000 in May to reim­burse the par­ty for expens­es on a post-elec­tion Uni­ty Tour. And he endorsed and cam­paigned for Clin­ton last sum­mer. Crit­ics from the left have accused Sanders of being a ​“sheep­dog” for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, herd­ing peo­ple dis­af­fect­ed with cor­po­rate cap­i­tal­ism and the two-par­ty sys­tem back into the ​“grave­yard of social movements.”

The ten­sion between Sanders, his allies and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty was on full dis­play in Iowa on Saturday.

“The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty won’t even imple­ment its own agen­da,” said Michael Lighty, a Nation­al Nurs­es Unit­ed orga­niz­er, dur­ing a con­ven­tion work­shop on the move­ment for sin­gle-pay­er health care.

“Every Demo­c­rat was ​‘pro-immi­grant’ but wouldn’t put a bill on the floor for us,” said Eri­ka Andi­o­la, an undoc­u­ment­ed DREAM­er and polit­i­cal direc­tor of Our Rev­o­lu­tion, dur­ing anoth­er work­shop sto­ry on the pow­er of com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­ing. ​“We said you put it on the floor or deport us.”

Sanders is set to return to the first-in-the-nation cau­cus state on August 31, where he will pro­mote his new book, Bernie Sanders’ Guide to Polit­i­cal Rev­o­lu­tion, at Hanch­er Audi­to­ri­um in Iowa City.