Why Hasn’t Bernie Sanders Launched his Independent Campaign Yet?

There is no realistic path to the Democratic nomination for Bernie Sanders.

Yes, flipping several hundred superdelegates is a remote possibility. An indictment might come for Hillary Clinton between now and July 23, or perhaps a hashtag campaign will weigh enough on her conscience to drop out. A meteor could hit Earth, too. So why stay in the race instead of breaking off and running as an independent candidate?

Might Sanders instead be helping the Democratic party by contesting the convention?

True, he might be a headache if he decides to continue his rote attacks on Clinton. But Senator Sanders hasn’t introduced anything new or particularly damaging in recent months, and his bullet-point list of complaints comes from the far left, where the majority of voters don’t reside.

Aside from the obvious, though, there must be a bubble of anxiety among Democratic Party, a nightmare from whence convention leader Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her cohorts might wake up from time to time — an independent presidential bid from Sanders.

Granted, the Senator from Vermont has repeatedly shot down the idea that he would run as an independent, and rightfully so. With Donald Trump the presumptive nominee on the Republican side, a third-party candidacy from a popular leftist would be a disaster for Democrats and, if you believe like I do that narcissist demagogues are bad news, the United States itself.

Sanders is surely aware of this, which is why he has stated he is running as a Democrat alone. But what if some small part of his continued candidacy is a result of that knowledge?

Perhaps his ultimate goal was to shape the party’s platform rather than win it all. It was always going to be a tall task to beat Clinton, in spite of the amazing candidacy he has built to challenge her. The math was wrong for him all along, and he has almost no shot to win without somehow flipping a huge majority of superdelegates.

Your disdain for that flawed system aside, staying in the race is now a matter of principle more than anything. He can keep Clinton from drifting to the center, and he can keep his core message alive for a few months yet. Perhaps he can convert a few more to his cause in that span and help change the future of politics.

Indeed, Sanders had said as much after repeated calls for him to drop out of the race. Here’s what he told NPR’s Steve Inskeep according to Danielle Kurtzleben:

I think we are perpetuating the political revolution by significantly increasing the level of political activity that we’re seeing in this country. I think it is good for the United States of America, good for the Democratic Party, to have a vigorous debate, to engage people in the political process. So I’m going to do everything I can to stimulate political discourse in this country and get young people, working people, involved in the political process.

Aside from principle, though, what would happen if he were to drop out of the race early? In spite of his claims to the contrary, would an independent run be in the cards for Sanders? He has millions of diehard supporters, after all, many of which have already stated they would write him in regardless of the Democratic nominee. If he ran as an independent, they might argue, he could win the presidency by virtue of the massive support he receives from independents.

Supporters would instantly clamor for an independent bid the second he dropped from the race. Indeed, others have argued that he could win as an independent, but that he would need to drop out of the race immediately. More on that in a minute.

We aren’t going to talk about why that would be nearly impossible — even if he wins, say, 75 percent of the vote Clinton might have gotten on her own, Sanders would likely lose the election to Trump or, at best, give Speaker of the House Paul Ryan the power to appoint his own choice in lieu of an electoral majority. Again, he must know this. But a smattering of calls to run as an independent might grow to a deafening roar if he dropped out of the Democratic race, and the rift between his supporters and Hillary’s might become an impassable ravine.

This is why staying in the race through the convention might be helping the Democratic cause more than hurting it. By staying in the race through the convention, Sanders will effectively rule himself out of an independent run.

Why? Well, a simple picture should tell much of the story.

Data from ballotpedia.org

Simply put, Sanders will be out of time if he takes his candidacy to the Democratic National Convention. Each state has filing requirements and deadlines for candidates to run as independents, most of which fall in summer. The convention runs July 23–25, which means he would already be too late to file in 14 states, including all-important Florida.

There are an additional 12 states that have a filing deadline on or before August 2. He would need to mount a lightning-fast signature-gathering and filing operation to meet those. Making it on time for those would be an improbability at best unless he were to quietly be gathering signatures for weeks beforehand.

That’s 26 states for which he would already be off the ballot.

At that point, why would he even try to get on the rest? California and New York filing dates might be attainable, but why risk handing the presidency to someone he abhors at that point? Instead, Sanders can lay down the mantle after the convention and guide his supporters toward Clinton by saying an independent candidacy would be an impossibility.

Incidentally, rules in 35 states require a candidate to file for candidacy as a write-in option lest votes for him or her go officially uncounted. The “Bernie or Bust” crowd might not even get a proper chance to write in their man if he chooses not to file as a write-in candidate.

Perhaps this is all far-fetched thinking and Sanders is simply trying to keep his message alive in the public’s eye. Maybe he honestly thinks he can convince enough superdelegates to defect to his cause. Purposeful or not, though, his march to the convention may actually be helping the Democratic cause by short-circuiting his own independent bid.

Alessandro Miglio is a freelance writer whose work has been featured at Bleacher Report, SI.com, and Footballguys.