Bernie Sanders, the fiery, inde­pen­dent, pop­ulist U.S. Sen­a­tor from Ver­mont, has been mulling a pres­i­den­tial cam­paign in 2016. There is no ques­tion about it: He should absolute­ly run.

It’s time for a new course of action—and Bernie Sanders has the name recognition, the resume and the gravitas to be the face of a new national democratic socialist political party that has the potential to change the direction of U.S. politics.

Mr. Sanders has the cre­den­tials, the charis­ma and the com­mu­ni­ty sup­port he needs to seize the pop­ulist moment we are in and help spark a grass­roots insur­gency against the bil­lion­aire class. Some­body has to take on Hillary Clin­ton from the Left — oth­er­wise the 2016 elec­tions will be noth­ing more than two cor­po­rate politi­cians mak­ing hol­low promis­es to the Amer­i­can peo­ple while sell­ing their souls behind the scenes to war prof­i­teers and Wall Street banksters. And while Eliz­a­beth War­ren is also a com­pelling can­di­date, chances are at least mod­er­ate­ly high that she may not run, opt­ing to play it safe in favor of main­tain­ing good stand­ing with the party’s lead­er­ship. And even if War­ren does run, her can­di­da­cy will not con­tribute to the build­ing of a gen­uine third par­ty move­ment — which is what the Left real­ly needs to do to build long-term inde­pen­dent polit­i­cal power.

That’s why Bernie Sanders must run — and it’s why he should run on a third par­ty tick­et, not as a Democrat.

Mere­ly impact­ing the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions through the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­maries is too small of a goal giv­en the times we are in, and will not go far or fast enough to move the peo­ple and the plan­et away from the brink of cor­po­rate and cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe. The last thing we need is a fire­brand like Mr. Sanders to spear­head a pop­ulist elec­toral charge and raise expec­ta­tions, only to con­cede after a few weeks, endorse Hillary and urge his fol­low­ers back into the folds of the estab­lish­ment Demo­c­ra­t­ic tent.

It would be dis­ap­point­ing, to say the least, to see a life­long inde­pen­dent and self-described demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist using the specter of a Repub­li­can boogey-man to scare mil­lions of every­day peo­ple back into the two-par­ty clos­et. The truth is, our country’s neolib­er­al turn advanced tremen­dous­ly under the Carter, Clin­ton and Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tions, and it was the Supreme Court that stole the 2000 elec­tion from Al Gore, not Ralph Nader.

Nei­ther should Mr. Sanders run only as an inde­pen­dent with­out attempt­ing to build the kind of orga­ni­za­tion­al and par­ty infra­struc­ture that can live on after his cam­paign is over, as Nad­er failed to do in 2004. Mr. Sanders should instead aim high­er and strive to change the course of U.S. his­to­ry by mak­ing 2016 the year that an inde­pen­dent third par­ty broke through the white noise and became a per­ma­nent fix­ture in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. This should not be done through the Green Par­ty, but through the con­struc­tion of a new, broad-based demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist party.

Build­ing a nation­al­ly viable third par­ty in less than two years will be chal­leng­ing, but Mr. Sanders has long enough coat­tails to pull it off. For one thing, the con­di­tions in this coun­try are ripe for this kind of move. Grass­roots social move­ments, from Madi­son to Occu­py Wall Street to #Black­Lives­Mat­ter, have been grow­ing steadi­ly since the eco­nom­ic crash in 2008, and have artic­u­lat­ed a reform agen­da that nei­ther polit­i­cal par­ty appears will­ing to embrace.

The 2014 midterm elec­tions saw the low­est vot­er turnout of the mod­ern era, after which the much bal­ly­hooed left turn by Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and Sen­ate Democ­rats turned out to be lit­tle more than lib­er­al hype. (See, for exam­ple, the party’s capit­u­la­tion to the cor­po­rate right with­out much of a fight dur­ing the recent ​“Cromin­bus” bud­get debate.) The inci­dent serves as yet anoth­er exam­ple of a polit­i­cal cul­ture that has become thor­ough­ly cor­rupt­ed by big cor­po­rate money.

Vot­ers aren’t stu­pid. Their apa­thy in these elec­tions comes from a lack of appeal­ing choic­es. In a sys­tem where nei­ther par­ty is will­ing to address the bread-and-but­ter issues that impact us most like jobs, edu­ca­tion, hous­ing, health-care and debt, our only options are to stay home or to ​“vote the bums out,” replac­ing them with anoth­er set of bums we’ll want to vote out, ad infini­tum.

That’s why the his­to­ry of U.S. elec­toral pol­i­tics is such a schiz­o­phrenic see­saw­ing of pow­er back and forth between two wings of the same cor­po­rate pow­er struc­ture. One par­ty swoops into office using the vot­er back­lash against the other’s bro­ken promis­es as a wedge, and then once in pow­er does very lit­tle (at best) to make every­day people’s lives bet­ter in mate­r­i­al, tan­gi­ble ways.

Such a sys­tem will nev­er be able to solve the stag­ger­ing num­ber of social prob­lems con­fronting us. A third par­ty can­di­da­cy led by Bernie Sanders, per­haps with a strong run­ning mate like Seat­tle coun­cil woman and fel­low social­ist Kshama Sawant as his run­ning mate, can give voice to the aspi­ra­tions of mil­lions of work­ing-class Amer­i­cans who have been effec­tive­ly shut out of the gov­ern­ing process by the cor­ro­sive influ­ence of cor­po­rate pow­er. Their goals should include win­ning at least a third of the pop­u­lar vote, con­crete vic­to­ries in dozens of local, coun­ty, statewide, and fed­er­al down-bal­lot races, con­struc­tion of per­ma­nent par­ty infra­struc­ture and close col­lab­o­ra­tion with social move­ment actors inde­pen­dent of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.

There is already an emerg­ing elec­toral prece­dent that sug­gests such a strat­e­gy is not out­side of our ambi­tious reach. Ms. Sawant’s suc­cess­ful cam­paign in Seat­tle in 2013 not only ele­vat­ed a card-car­ry­ing social­ist to office, it helped cat­a­pult (along­side tena­cious street demon­stra­tions) the nation­al Fight for $15 move­ment that has seen sev­er­al major Amer­i­can cities pass sig­nif­i­cant min­i­mum wage increases.

The suc­cess of Howie Hawkins and Bri­an Jones on the Green Par­ty tick­et in November’s New York guber­na­to­r­i­al race is also strong evi­dence that the appetite for third-par­ty move­ment-build­ing is there — if orga­niz­ers and activists are will­ing to seize the ini­tia­tive and take some risks.

The lib­er­al estab­lish­ment will cry ​“spoil­er,” but their strat­e­gy has long proven to be bank­rupt. It’s time for a new course of action — and Bernie Sanders has the name recog­ni­tion, the resume and the grav­i­tas to be the face of a new nation­al demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist polit­i­cal par­ty that has the poten­tial to change the direc­tion of U.S. politics.