Ricky Zipp

Medill News Service

WASHINGTON — A group of progressives gathered in Washington this weekend to try to lure Sen. Bernie Sanders to lead the creation of new political party, but the former Democratic presidential candidate was a no-show.

Nevertheless, the group calling itself Draft Bernie for a People’s Party delivered an invite to Sanders signed by 50,000 supporters, and the head of the group said they are ready to move forward with a new party “with or without Bernie.”

The several hundred people gathered for the Convergence Conference cheered throughout the meeting when the Democratic and Republican parties were criticized for succumbing to corporate influence and when speakers such as Harvard University professor Cornel West and Socialist Seattle City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant called for a revolution in American politics.

They also seemed to embrace the reality of moving forward without Sanders as their leader. Sanders’ office did not respond to a request for comment.

Draft Bernie founder Nick Brana created the group after working for Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign and then moving to Our Revolution, a progressive group organized when the Vermont senator’s campaign came to an end.

Brana said he wanted to launch a new political party based around the core principles of Sanders’ campaign: Medicare for all, free public college, breaking up the big banks, and removing corporate financial support and influence from politics.

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Getting Sanders to become the face of this new party has been the goal since February, and Friday’s petition, delivered to Sanders’ Senate office, was to be proof of its seriousness. But Sanders did not respond to Draft Bernie’s request.

The question for progressives now is whether creating a new party can lead to real change on the left or would simply create a split within the Democratic Party that leaves President Trump and Republicans in control of Washington.

Brana said supporting a strategy that avoids splitting votes is exactly what caused progressives to be ignored by the Democratic Party in the past.

But Thomas Mann, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said Brana’s plan is not an effective option for progressives.

“Sanders supporters would be well advised to avoid sectarian battles within the progressive/left community and turn their attention to building majority support for Trump's departure from public life,” said Mann in an email. “That means working constructively and pragmatically with the Democratic Party.”

Neil Sroka, communications director of Democracy for America, another progressive group founded by 2004 presidential candidate Howard Dean, also said the Draft Bernie strategy is not the clearest path to a progressive victory.

The largest hurdle for progressives who want to start a new party by 2018 or 2020 is not just the effectiveness of the strategy, but the reality of achieving their goal, Sroka said.

“The reality is, gaining ballot access in states takes an incredible amount of time,” Sroka said. “As a political party your number one path to political success is through access to that ballot. If you want to affect change in 2018 and 2020, that’s going to take a heck of a lot of time just to get on that ballot and that’s before we even talk about recruiting candidates.”

But Brana said he's sticking to the plan to find a viable third-party candidate for 2020. And the end goal is actually much bigger — replacing the Democratic Party.

“The ultimate goal is to replace the Democratic Party, it’s not merely to create another party,” said Brana.