U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) addresses the crowd at NHTI during a town meeting Tuesday in Concord. GEOFF FORESTER / Monitor staff

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) gets a yard stick from Steve Rand of Rand Hardware in Plymouth after he introduced the senator at NHTI on Tuesday, May 28, 2019. GEOFF FORESTER—Monitor staff

A confident Sen. Bernie Sanders says he’s the best candidate in the historically large field of two-dozen Democratic presidential candidates to oust Republican President Donald Trump from the White House in 2020.

“Our campaign is the strongest campaign to defeat the worst president in the history of the United States,” the independent from Vermont who’s making his second-straight White House run touted to an audience at a town hall Tuesday at NHTI in Concord.

It’s a line Sanders also used during stops Monday at rallies in Warner, Laconia and Rollinsford.

Speaking to the crowd of some 225 people in Concord, Sanders said that “I suspect that others (in the Democratic presidential field) could beat Trump as well.”

But he highlighted that, “I think that we maybe are in the strongest position because the issues that I have fighting for, for years, are issues that will resonate, I believe, with the American people, especially in battleground states where Trump should not have won.”

Sanders crushed Hillary Clinton by more than 20 percentage points in New Hampshire’s 2016 Democratic presidential primary. The victory sent the one-time long-shot candidate into a marathon battle with Clinton, the eventual nominee.

“I want to thank the people of New Hampshire very much for the great victory they gave us four years ago,” Sanders said.

He pointed out that back in 2016, “many of the ideas that I was talking about seemed to the mainstream media and establishment politicians to be radical.”

Among those ideas were his proposals to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour, Medicare-for-all and free college tuition at public schools. Sanders emphasized that those issues “have now been accepted by the American people.”

And he gave Granite Staters the credit, saying “those issues would have not swept the American public and the political life of this country if it were not for states like New Hampshire that said ‘we hear what Bernie is saying and these are not radical ideas.’ ”

After a short speech, the senator took questions from the audience. Questions ranged from such issues as health care and Medicare-for-all, voting rights and getting big bucks out of politics, immigration policy, climate change, income inequality and student debt.

Because of his 2016 landslide victory in New Hampshire’s primary, and the continuing strong organization in the state of his supporters, the first-in the-nation presidential primary’s considered a must-win for Sanders. But as of now, he’s in second in the latest polling in the state, trailing former vice president Joe Biden.

Before arriving at the town hall, Sanders held a closed door meeting at the Barley House in downtown Concord with a couple dozen state lawmakers as he made his case for their support.

Back at the town hall, Christine Hobby of Sanborton told the Monitor “I am with all of his positions 100% and I am hoping that he can do it.”

She said she backed Sanders in 2016 and is very much leaning toward supporting him again. But she admitted she also has her eyes on one of his rivals, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii.

Keith Yergeau of Bedford said that he’s “99% with Bernie.”

“I love to feel the energy,” he said. “It’s different than any other candidate who’s running right now.”

Charles and Marianna Latchis of Concord said they voted for Sanders in the 2016 primary.

Marianna Latchis noted that “I have three other candidates that I am pretty excited about.”

Those candidates are Sens. Kamala Harris of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, as well as South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

“I haven’t had a chance to see the other three in a setting like this, but I’m still kind of going with Bernie because his message hasn’t changed,” she said.

But her husband’s sticking with Sanders.

“He’s been promoting these populist values for so many years,” he said. “A lot of these other candidates are just going with whatever way the wind’s blowing. That’s why I’m with Bernie.”