Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., charged Wednesday night that the Democratic Party’s platform has been failing for the past decade and a half, despite Barack Obama's two presidential wins.

“The business model, if you like, of the Democratic Party for the last 15 years or so has been a failure,” Sanders said, a line that was met with applause at a panel event in Mississippi Wednesday night.

Sanders' comments are in line with what many said is a problem Democrats have holding seats in statehouses and governor's mansions around the country.

“Now what happened — people sometimes don’t see that because of the charismatic individual named Barack Obama who won the presidency in 2008 and 2012. He was obviously an extraordinary candidate, brilliant man,” Sanders continued. “But behind that reality, over the last ten years Democrats have lost about 1,000 seats in state legislatures all across this country.”





The former presidential candidate, who lost the Democratic primaries in 2016 to Hillary Clinton, said he didn’t understand how places like Mississippi had fully Republican governments when he claimed the “Republican agenda is the agenda of the billionaire class and is at war with working people.”