President Bernie?

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said last night that he’s prepared to step up and run for president if the Democratic candidate doesn’t go left enough on changing society.

The self-proclaimed socialist has been hammering at his colleagues over not pressing for a single-payer government-run healthcare system and recently went on a tour of southern states to attempt to rally liberals there.

Sanders, 72, told MSNBC there are “enormous problems facing this country.”

“Income and wealth inequality, massively high unemployment. In fact, we’re the only country in the industrialized world which doesn’t guarantee health care to all people — global warming,” he said.

“It seems to me would be a real disgrace if we had a campaign with those issues, the needs of working families, the needs of the middle class, the needs of the elderly were not front and center.”

The Vermont lawmaker reiterated that he’s long had a problem with colleagues who take money from big corporations. “We need people out there fighting for ordinary people and not simply taking huge campaign contributions from the wealthy and the powerful,” he said.

“So, what I have said is that candidate is needed. And if somebody else doesn’t step up, I am prepared to do it.”

Of Republicans, he said, “All they can do is play the anti-ObamaCare card and hope that it fails and they’re going to lose on that.”

Recently, Sanders told Salon he does not “wake up every morning with a huge desire to be president of the United States… I don’t.”

“I do wake up believing [that] this country is facing more serious crises than we have faced since the Great Depression. And if you include the planetary crisis of global warming, the situation today may even be worse,” he said. “And given that reality, what distresses me enormously is that there is very little discussion about these major crises, and even less discussion about ideas that can resolve these issues.”

Some have mused about a dream ticket for the far left: Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).