ROCHESTER, Minn. — Surgeons at the Mayo Clinic on Monday did emergency surgery on 2020 presidential contender Bernie Sanders to remove a corn cob that had been stuck up his backside for decades, and saw instant improvement in his bearing and conduct.

Doctors said they first noticed that Sanders, who is sitting atop the Democratic nomination list, was suffering from a condition known as “corncobotitis” as he campaigned in Iowa last month.

They reached out to the Sanders campaign and made contact, suggesting that the removal procedure was absolutely necessary if the candidate hoped to have any shot at all of winning the presidency.

“Nobody likes a cranky, lecturing, finger-wagger,” Dr. Dmitry Velnov, a proctology specialist, told reporters. “And that’s been who Bernie was for decades now.”

Asked what led his team to finally make the diagnosis of corncobitis after all these years of Sanders being in the public eye, Velnov said they honed in on it after the candidate began attacking other Democrats.

“We all know there’s an unwritten rule that Democratic presidential contenders simply don’t attack each other,” Velnov said. “I mean, Bernie was always grouchy — and that is certainly one symptom of the condition.

“But his condition was obviously advancing and we noticed that after he slammed Elizabeth Warren as a ‘candidate of the elite’ last month,” said the surgeon. “Bernie is an elitist himself, what what being a millionaire and owning a couple of homes. So that was our biggest signal.”

Velnov said that Sanders’ demeanor should improve dramatically now that the corn cob has been removed.

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