It is fair to say that the entire country is waiting to see what Bernie Sanders does next. On one hand, Hillary Clinton now has enough pledged delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, which makes some people think this is the end of the road for Sanders.
On the other hand, Sanders has previously commented on his willingness to campaign until the last possible moment in hopes of luring votes from superdelegates (who can vote however they wish to vote) away from Clinton.
However, there is a third possibility that the Sanders campaign has hinted at: running as a Green Party candidate.
When reporter Elex Michaelson asked Sanders about the possibility of him ever running on a Green Party ticket with Jill Stein, Sanders did not offer an outright rejection. Instead, he merely said “Right now, our goal is to win the Democratic nomination.”
This has led many to speculate that if he were unable to convince enough superdelegates to votes for him at the Democratic convention in July that he would consider a Green Party run. Stein herself is open to this possibility, having previously written to Sanders about the possibility of a joint ticket.
Certainly, Sanders’ supporters want this to happen, using hashtags such as #StillSanders and #NeverHillary to indicate they will vote for no one else.
Ultimately, if Sanders runs as a Green Party candidate, it will be because he thinks it is the best way to defeat Donald Trump. This is ironic, though, because doing so will almost certainly guarantee Donald Trump’s victory in November.
The Democrats who support Sanders running as a Green Party Candidate believe that this will be a way to positively channel the modern frustration with the political system.
For instance, many people assume the popularity of both Sanders and Trump arose from the idea of the two as “protest candidates”–a way for voters to indicate how they are tired of the standard quo of Washington politicians. These supporters hope that the American public will collectively feel that way again and choose Sanders rather than vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
However, it is far likelier that Sanders will become the next iteration of Ralph Nader, with a Green Party campaign that does nothing but hand Trump a victory just as Nader helped George W. Bush defeat Al Gore back in 2000.
In the 2000 election struggle between Bush and Gore, everything came down to the state of Florida. Ultimately, Bush defeated Gore by a scant 537 votes.
Nader won a comparatively huge 97,421 votes in Florida, and though he never got close to receiving enough votes to become president, liberal Nader did succeed at luring enough votes away from prospective Gore voters to help Bush secure the White House.
Frankly, if Bernie Sanders were to run as a Green Party candidate, there is little reason to believe that we would not simply see a repeat of the three-way struggle. Except this time instead of the struggle being between Bush, Gore, and Nader it would be between Trump, Clinton and Sanders.
Frankly, most of the assumptions behind why a Green Party Sanders would find success are based on a very naive understanding of how the real world operates.
For instance, it’s been asserted that Sanders would be a alternative for liberals and independents who do not like the militarism of Hillary Clinton. They believe that such voters would turn away from both Clinton and Trump and instead choose Sanders due to his historically anti-military stances.
However, one of the chief reasons behind the popularity of Donald Trump is that he has positioned himself as a man of action. He has previously advocated destroying oil fields in order to deny funding to ISIS and to concentrate military efforts on fighting ISIS itself and not Syrian President Bashar Assad.
In many ways, these plans are similar to the “build a wall” statements about combating illegal immigration: the public responds well to someone who is willing to immediately create solutions to persistent problems.
Compared to this man of action, the passive Sanders will come across as another liberal who is content to let American be threatened by ISIS abroad and immigration within. The only threat he represents as a Green Party candidate is, again, to Hillary Clinton herself.
The next move is up to Sanders. He may take Stein up on her Green Party offer. Either way, he has become very successful at creating a divided Democratic party, one where many of its members may decline to vote in November. The result is clear: Trump will triumph.
~American Liberty Report
