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The line to catch U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders at CSU's Lory Student Center stretched out the door.

Sanders was on the Colorado State University campus today to stump for local Democrats running for office on Nov. 6.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders left Colorado State University with a simple message at Wednesday night’s rally for Democratic candidates: This midterm election is very much about Republican President Donald Trump.

Washington, D.C., doesn’t hold the values of Coloradans, young people and in particular the 1,800 who filled the Lory Student Center Ballroom on Wednesday, he argued. Voting — and badgering two or three of your friends to do the same — is how to change that, he told the crowd, most of whom had just watched Democratic nominees for office espouse the same.

"Our message to Trump is a very profound message,” Sanders said as he rounded out his speech. “This is a great nation not because we have a $700 billion military budget. We are a great nation not because we have more millionaires and billionaires than any other country. We are a great nation because we have led the world in the fight to understand that we are a common humanity.

“... Mr. Trump, we have suffered from discrimination for 200 years. But we are not going backwards, we are going forward."

He also saved an endorsement of Amendment 73 for the end of the rally, where he decried four-day school weeks and teacher pay. Amendment 73 would institute a graduated income tax and pull in an estimated $1.6 billion more for K-12 education.

“Here we are, the wealthiest nation in the world, here we are as people who understand we will not succeed unless we have the best educated nation on earth, … and somehow we do not have enough money today to provide education to kids in Colorado for five days a week?” Sanders said, cheers drowning out part of his remarks. “We don’t have enough money to pay teachers a living and decent wage?”

Sanders, who is nominally independent but ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016, headlined the stop as part of a multi-state get-out-the-vote campaign for the midterms. His supporters barnstormed the Colorado caucuses, where he won the state overall with nearly 60 percent of the caucus vote. His support in Fort Collins, where he held a pre-caucus rally at CSU, was even stronger at 2-to-1.

After he lost the overall party nomination, Sanders spoke in the same ballroom at CSU to support Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president. State Sen. John Kefalas opened the Wednesday night event and joked that he tried, and failed, to get a selfie with Sanders the last go around. Kefalas is now running for Larimer County Commissioner.

In addition to Kefalas, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, now running for governor, and Joe Neguse, who is running to replace Polis in Washington, all Democrats, warmed up the crowd.

Neguse and Bennet hit notes of youth voter turnout, with Neguse telling the crowd they have the chance to send a 34-year-old African American to Congress — Colorado’s first black U.S. Representative. He added that he can’t wait to officially sign on to Sanders’ signature Medicare for All legislation.

Our Revolution President Nina Turner probably drew the largest cheers outside of Sanders, however.

“Ladies this isn't just about controlling our bodies, it's about controlling our wallets,” she said, drawing the line between universal health care, women’s reproductive rights and the gender wage gap. “And we need our whole damn dollar now."

Sanders opened with an olive branch, of sorts, to Colorado’s Trump voters, which made up 43 percent of the total. They probably believed the president, he said; they just didn’t know Trump is “a pathological liar.”

Aside from opening and closing salvos against Trump, Sanders packed his speech with rallying cries for economic and social equality, including free health care, and — in a poignant remark, given the setting — decrying the “punishment of people for the crime of getting a higher education,” via student loan debt.

“If this country can give a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the top 1 percent, we can damn well make public colleges…” Sanders said, with the crowd’s cheers drowning out the last part of the statement.

Follow below with updates from Coloradoan journalists and others on scene.