Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., didn’t pick up enough delegates to run for president on the Democratic Party ticket, but Friday brought news that a national party’s nomination is his for the asking.
Jill Stein, likely presidential candidate for the liberal-environmentalist Green Party, told the Guardian newspaper that she has invited Sanders “to sit down and explore collaboration.”
Stein insisted, “everything is on the table.” In fact she would be willing to forego her presidential nomination for him. “He could lead the ticket and build a political movement,” she said.
She noted that many of the Vermont socialist’s supporters are flocking to the Green Party rather than supporting presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and had words of warning as well as encouragement for Sanders.
“If he continues to declare his full faith in the Democratic Party, it will leave many of his supporters very disappointed. That political movement is going to go on – it isn’t going to bury itself in the graveyard alongside Hillary Clinton,” Stein said.
If Sanders accepted the Green nomination, he would be its most prominent candidate since consumer activist Ralph Nader ran as a green in 2000.
Nader siphoned enough votes away from Democrat Al Gore that a recount in Florida, the deciding state in the Electoral College map, went all the way to the Supreme Court. Because of the Green spoiler, Gore won the popular vote but lost the presidency.
The only problem that a Sanders candidacy might run into is so-called “sore loser laws” in a few states, which say that if a candidate ran on the ballot for one party and lost they cannot appear on the ballot for another party in the election.
In South Dakota and Texas, at the very least, Sanders would have to be a write-in.
