Calling on Michiganders to be “part of the political revolution,” Bernie Sanders drew more than 1,000 people Saturday to an afternoon speech in Macomb County, the county that pundits said gave President Donald Trump his winning Michigan edge in 2016.

Sanders' speech was part of the veteran U. S. senator’s spring swing through the Midwest, in an early stage of Sanders’ second run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

Sanders spoke at an outdoor rally held at Macomb Community College’s south campus in Warren. He called the president a "pathological liar" and emphasized that, although Trump lost the popular vote by 3 million votes, the president carried much of the Midwest – including Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

“Together,” Sanders told the crowd, “we are going to make sure that that does not happen again.”

Abdul El-Sayed, who ran a failed Democratic primary campaign for Michigan governor in 2018, gave a short, fiery introduction before Sanders took the podium. Sanders, looking sunburned from previous outdoor stops, drew an enthusiastic sign-shaking crowd with numerous young supporters, although he is 77 and the oldest candidate actively running for the White House.

In 2016, millions of young people fueled his hopeful but ultimately frustrated campaign, when Sanders was edged out of the Democratic Party’s nomination by Hillary Clinton.

Sporting orange hair in Saturday’s audience was Joslyn Kane, 24, of Detroit, “a barrista — I make coffee for people,” Kane said. She supported Sanders in his first campaign, and she is sticking with him, Kane said, in part because her employer does not provide health insurance.

On Saturday, Sanders repeated themes familiar to his early supporters, including his prominent push to give the nation “Medicare for all” — the term recently adopted by many Democrats to describe turning the nation’s health-care system into a single-payer plan, similar to what Medicare already offers seniors, and to what Canada and much of Europe offer their citizens. The idea is something that Sanders began to champion in the 1990s.

Conservative critics have long criticized as “socialism” virtually all proposals for single-payer health care – the idea that the government would become the primary insurer for all Americans.

Drawing his biggest cheer, Sanders called the current American health-care system “insane” and shouted: “This country is going to adopt a Medicare-for-all, single-payer plan!”

Sanders also voiced his long-standing support for other major proposals “that they used to say were radical, extreme, remember?” he told the crowd. Among those were a $15 minimum wage put into federal law, a federal jobs program to rebuild that nation’s infrastructure while creating “15 million good jobs,” an all-out fight to halt climate change, and “legalizing marijuana — imagine that!” Sanders said, to laughter and applause.

Although recent polls have shown Sanders’ appeal thinning as numerous other Democrats announced their presidential plans, Sanders’ army of volunteers is planning to host about 3,900 organizing parties for his presidential bid, and a reported 1 million people have signed up to support his second attempt at the White House, according to Politico.

In advance of Sanders’ speech in Warren and other Midwest states, the Republican National Committee circulated a statement saying that Sanders was bent on “taking over nearly every aspect of American lives with his socialist agenda.”

Among the statement’s key points: that Sanders would raise taxes, seek to make “massive changes to democracy” such as abolishing the Electoral College and lowering the voting age to 16, and support the “job-killing” Green New Deal that aims to restructure the U.S. economy in ways that would dramatically reduce pollution blamed for climate change but also could disrupt many traditional industries, such as auto making.

“Bernie Sanders continues to move the Democratic Party away from everyday Michiganders and towards a socialist agenda of outrageous tax hikes and government takeovers of key industries,” said the statement, provided by Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Joyce.

Saturday’s rally was the second time that Jim Lang, 80, of Royal Oak had seen Sanders speak in the outdoor space at the college, Lang said.

The last time was on January 2017, when it was a much colder day, and Sanders “was just coming out again after losing to Hillary,” said Lang, a retired lawyer and former Sierra Club volunteer.

“Back then, he was the leading voice for social Democrats. Now, I see him as the mentor for a whole bunch of them,” Lang said.