Sen. Bernie Sanders took the stage in Denver on Sunday evening to a deafening roar from a crowd of many thousands of people who rarely let up.

Much of Sanders’ speech, inside a gigantic space at the Colorado Convention Center, sounded like a speech he gave last fall in Denver, nearly verbatim. He called for Medicare for All, a Green New Deal and a $15 federal minimum wage as part of a platform “by the working class, of the working class and for the working class.”

But since his last rally in Colorado, he’s distinguished himself as the front-runner in the Democratic presidential primary, having taken the popular vote in the chaotic Iowa caucuses and won the New Hampshire primary outright.

He’s also got a new and extremely financially potent primary rival in the former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

“We’re going to end a corrupt political system in which billionaires buy elections,” Sanders said. “Democracy, to me, means one person, one vote. Not Bloomberg or anybody else spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to buy an election.”

Sanders spent only a fraction of his roughly 35-minute speech criticizing President Donald Trump. That segment of the speech was concise and forceful, with Sanders calling Trump “a pathological liar who is running a corrupt administration, who has no clue what the Constitution of the United States is about, who is a bully, who is vindictive, who is a racist, who is a sexist, who is a homophobe, who is a xenophobe, who is a religious bigot.”

These and many other lines drew ear-shattering applause. A significant portion of the crowd arrived hours early, and some waited in hour-long lines to buy campaign stickers and shirts. The campaign claimed more than 11,000 people attended, a total confirmed by a fire department official.

Emma Tang, a high school student from Colorado Springs who will be voting for the first time in November, said Sanders’ positions on health care and student loans appeal to her.

Eliminating student debt, which Sanders supports, would “mean that I can get a higher education without worrying so much about how I’m going to pay for it,” Tang said.

She added, “His policies are geared toward the youth and the next generation. A lot of the other candidates are talking about the future but not so much in the future. Bernie Sanders is talking about a better world.”

Erik Hamlin, 45, of Arvada, said he’s a former Republican who now supports Sanders.

“I’m a blue-collar man. I make minimum wage,” said Hamlin, a construction worker. “Bernie Sanders, he’s about supporting workers, supporting teachers, reforming the country and invigorating the country.”

Hamlin was in line to donate $20 to Sanders. Nearby, a nurse said she’d give $3. The line was dozens of people deep more than an hour before the main program began.

Kelly Canfield, a business analyst from Denver, said he’s encouraged by how “mainstream” the Sanders agenda has gone.

“It’s about time,” said Canfield, 57. “None of it is radical. To me, if the Democratic Party picks Bernie, it’s more like going home, to FDR, instead of running to the right like they have been. This is as American as apple pie. Not radical.”

But there are still many Democrats who view Sanders’ platform as radical, including in Congress. The candidate’s wife, Jane Sanders, told The Denver Post in an interview ahead of the speech that she believes her husband, if elected, would be able to convert non-believers and transform the Democratic Party to a party of Sanders.

“He would play a big role in terms of who’s elected to the Congress,” she said.

Asked why, given that he’d need a sympathetic House and Senate to advance his plans, he hasn’t endorsed one of former Gov. John Hickenlooper’s more progressive primary rivals in Colorado’s U.S. Senate race, Jane Sanders said she wasn’t sure.

But, she added, “In 2016, Bernie ran on Medicare for All, free tuition to public colleges and universities, $15 minimum wage and a Green New Deal. We were told all of these things were ridiculous, never going to happen. And now every single person — well, maybe not Hickenlooper — but that is the conversation within the Democratic Party.

“So he’s changing the conversation, and if elected, he’ll change the country.”

The rally was the first in a series of Colorado visits by major presidential candidates this month. President Donald Trump, former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren will all be here in the next week. All but Biden, who’ll be in town for a private fundraiser hosted by former Interior Sec. Ken Salazar, will be holding public events.

Colorado’s presidential primary ballots will be tallied on Super Tuesday, March 3. This is Colorado’s first presidential primary after several caucus cycles.