Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. said Thursday his liberal ideas which were once seen as "fringe" are now infused into a mainstream America he hopes will rise up to support his second bid for the White House.

In his first prime-time interview since announcing his 2020 campaign for president, Sanders made his case to an MSNBC audience why he is running again when there are plenty of other progressive alternatives, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., this election cycle — a stark contrast to the 2016 roster.

"First of all, I'm proud of what we accomplished in 2016 and I'm proud that we changed the political discourse in this country," Sanders told host Chris Hayes. "That ideas are widely accepted, are part of the mainstream, are being supported by many Democratic candidates. If you will recall three years ago, these ideas were considered to be radical and extreme and fringe ideas."

He added: "We've come a long way I think in transforming the Democratic Party and making it into a more progressive party."





Secondly, Sanders cited the large wave of support he's received so far, which included raising $3.3 million in the first 12 hours after he announced on Monday he would seek the Democratic nomination. The money, which came from 120,000 donors, beat the first-day fundraising totals of his rivals. He raised roughly $6 million in total as of Wednesday.

Noting the media's focus on his financial success as simply "great," Sanders told Hayes that he is making good progress in realizing the key element of his "political revolution" in which millions of people are mobilized on the grassroots level. He said his campaign has already almost 1 million people signed up to help with the election effort.

"And why that's important is that I believe from the bottom of my heart that if you learn from the civil rights movement, from the trade union movement, from the women's movement, from the gay movement, you know real change in this country never occurs unless millions are standing up and fighting back," he said. "So if we're going to pass Medicare for All, we need to mobilize millions of people to stand up to the insurance companies and the drug companies. That's what this campaign is about."