Many lovely friends have asked me to support or at least weigh in on the Draft Bernie for a People’s Party movement.

Here goes:

1. Everyone I know personally involved with this movement is a loving and kind person with their heart and soul in the right place.

2. That being said, it’s not going to happen.

3. Bernie is anti-third party in this current political reality. He saw directly what the Vermont Progressive Party did to split the vote and lose historically Democratic seats in Vermont to Republicans. He endorsed Hillary for this reason (among others.) He is committed to not going down in history as the guy who screwed us by splitting the liberal vote and enabling a GOP constitutional convention and complete 2020 gerrymander.

4. It would take 80 million votes for a party that doesn’t even exist yet to overcome the GOP majority in 2018 and 2020. You don’t want to live in that country. I don’t want to live in that country. Bernie doesn’t want to live in that country.

5. Ross Perot got 19% of the popular vote in 1992, more than 4x the combined 3rd party 2016 vote. Even if you doubled the number of Jill and Gary votes (remember how Jill’s multi-million dollar recount picked up MORE votes for Trump and then quietly went away?) this is still double their numbers. Perot got NOT ONE SINGLE ELECTORAL VOTE. I appreciate that the Greens are trying to enact ranked choice voting, but it’s not going to happen under the purview of a third party. Our electoral system awards electoral college votes based on plurality.

6. Establishment Dems WANT progressives to f*ck off. It leaves them free to rule without meaningful opposition. It plays directly into their hands.

7. Bernie knows what the f*ck he’s doing. And he’s disappointed all of us at some point. In our own way many of us have gone through the political adolescence of realizing our father figure is fallible, but I’m done taking it out on him for doing the best he can with extraordinary wisdom, integrity, and political contrariness.

8. Bernie is drafting US for a people’s party: the weak and vulnerable and still powerful Democratic Party. My friends are taking office in droves. If you want to insult me, fine. If you want to insult my friends who are some of the most integral, skilled, scrappy people, let’s take this outside. This is not a sleazy back room politics-as-usual operation. #DemEnter is a knock down, drag out war for the soul of this nation, and it is what Bernie believes in.

I still support third parties because I support choice and autonomy. I do believe they are essential to long-term accountability, but I know that the next 4 years is not the time to split progressives off from the only opportunity we have not to plunge this country into the Dark Ages.

Establishment Dems suck. Oligarchs suck. They are destroying this country. That’s why I’m not shutting myself in a room where my pure politics will be ineffective. I’m bringing this fight to them, and so are thousands of progressive Dems.

I’m not holding my nose; I’m grabbing them by the balls.

And those are my thoughts.