Paving a New Way Forward
An Interview With Draft Bernie Founder Nick Brana
Note: Responses have been edited for length.
Nick Brana worked for the Bernie 2016 campaign, and now is the founder and leader of Draft Bernie For a People’s Party. He sits down with The Progressive Times to discuss the past, present, and future of progressive third parties in American politics.
TPT: Thank you for joining us today. To get started, could you tell us a little about yourself and your work for those readers who might not be familiar with Draft Bernie?
NB: So, I’ve worked in politics for more than a decade, worked in Democratic politics, and most recently I worked on the Hill and I had worked on a number of campaigns before joining Bernie’s campaign in 2015. From there I went on to join Our Revolution as the electoral manager there. On the campaign part of what I did was working the superdelegates; that was a big part of my job. That was part of what led me towards creating Draft Bernie in the end.
TPT: So what prompted you to start Draft Bernie and how did you go about it?
NB: It was working with the superdelegates, realizing simply how disconnected they were from the lives of working people, from the interests of working people, realizing this system of patronage inside the Democratic Party and how unconcerned they were about the issues, and how deeply ingrained corporate money was into the mentality of the party and the party structure itself. Working there, and my previous experience with the party has pushed me towards this, but this really led me to believe that it’s not a matter of removing the tumor of corporate money from an otherwise healthy body; rather, the entire body of the Democratic Party is corrupted. Corporate money is essentially written into the party’s DNA, and there would be almost nothing left if you were to extract that.
So there’s that, along with also looking into the history of third parties and realizing that while the challenges to create a major new party are great, there is a successful model in our own history of having done so. That’s what the Republican and Democratic Parties did, for politicians with large followings inside the establishment regime to show the limits of the party, and after having done so, to take that following to a new party. For example, Lincoln’s Republican party overthrew the old, pro-slavery Whig Party within just a few years by doing that. To me, the person that meets that description perfectly now is Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders is incredibly popular now, the most popular politician in the country, and despite that, he’s working within an institution that is not amenable to progressives, that is not responsive to any of the issues that working people have.
That’s the bad news — the bad news is that I do not believe we can reform the Democratic Party because of how ingrained the control by the oligarchs is inside that party. The good news is, though, that with Bernie Sanders, if you were to take half of the Democrats and half of the independents and form a new party with them, the independents being by far the largest group, that’s already the largest party in the United States by far. Bernie’s popularity with those groups is around 80 percent, so I think it’s eminently doable at this point and people are hungry for an alternative. You’ve got Trump’s daily assault on working people, which you would think would be building the Democrats immensely, and you’ve got Bernie working to bring people into the Democrats basically every day.
So you’ve got two major forces that should be bringing people into the party, but in fact, the people’s disdain for the Democratic Party and the recognition that it is not a genuine opposition party, but rather is a variation of the Republican Party, is so great that people are actually leaving the Democratic Party and moving into independent status. Because of that, I think there is a direction the country is moving as a whole towards an independent alternative, and rather than trying to struggle against that current, we should embrace it and we should create our own progressive, populist party.
TPT: So what do you say to the conventional belief that because of the structure of the American political system, a third party will never establish itself and will only act as a “spoiler” to help the other side win?
NB: Where we are, there’s this kind of paradoxical effect that as both parties move further to the right as they have for year, then people on the left, which is the majority because the majority of the country are progressive populists on the issues and side with Bernie down the line on his platform, people become disillusioned and realize that the Democratic Party is way too ideologically close to the Republican Party, and they’re not motivated to go out and vote. Turnout, essentially, is depressed because of that, and we saw that in the past election; that’s what led to Trump’s victory. And so the way to win is not to follow the Republican Party further away from the views of the majority; it’s instead to do what Bernie did on his campaign, to offer a bold alternative that actually inspires people.
Bernie built up a political revolution within a year; we can formalize that into a campaign because that will then inspire people to come out and to vote. The Democratic Party base is essentially with Bernie but the party isn’t, so he can take that base into a new party, add to it independents, add to it anti-establishment voters, add to it young people, add to it third-party voters, and you’re talking about a coalition now that is much larger than the Democratic Party. This party would replace the Democratic Party in quick order.
TPT: How does your movement’s mission to “Draft Bernie” as the head of the People’s Party align with the Sanders campaign’s message of “not me us”, that the political revolution should not center around any one person? Is there a contradiction there?
NB: Bernie won’t be the one designing the platform; that’s actually what is so inspiring about this to me: it actually does represent the people taking back power. First of all, it’s the people telling Bernie — Bernie called us to the campaign, and now it’s our turn to call Bernie to a new party, and that’s what we’re doing. I think that’s empowering; I think that is the “not me us” part of this. It’s the people saying, “Bernie, we don’t have confidence in that approach anymore. The Democratic Party is continuing to shrink despite your best efforts.” That, I believe, is part of it, and it’s also the fact that this is not an effort to make Bernie the king of a party or the autocrat of a party.
This is what we’ll do should Bernie decide to do this: we’ll come together as the many movements that make up the progressive movement, and we will craft a platform together, democratically. We will also create a new party structure because the structure of the Democratic Party is completely undemocratic itself. You have party bosses who essentially get to pick the candidates in the primaries. Just recently in court, the Democratic Party essentially affirmed its right to pick candidates in back rooms if it wants to. So, reforming the party process so that it’s not superdelegates who are electing the party leadership but it’s people, the actual membership of the party, that’s just as important as actually crafting a platform. That’s where I say that it is about “not me us”.
TPT: If Bernie were to refuse the leadership of the People’s Party and instead chose to maintain his position as an independent affiliated with the Democrats, is there anyone else you would want to see take the helm?
NB: There are lots of great progressives who I would hope to join together in this effort. We have folks, of course, like Dr. Cornel West, Josh Fox, who joined us in the effort to create something new. I am very confident that Bernie will join us. We’re talking about the longest-serving independent in Congress, who tried to build the Liberty Union Party in the ’70s to try and take down both establishment parties. This is the guy who had to be talked out of running as an independent the last time he ran for president and then left the Democratic Party during the DNC Convention because he couldn’t wait to get out of the party.
And of course, he himself has said that if the Democratic Party fails to reform, then the action will be in a third party. That’s his quote: “the action will be in a third party.” So, I am confident that he will join us in the end; it’s just a matter of how much evidence does this require before it becomes evident to him and others that this strategy is really not succeeding. But if he were ever to say “You know, I’m wedded to the Democratic Party forever”, then those of us believe that the Democratic Party is not going to be the solution would have to work amongst ourselves to create an alternative.
TPT: So given your past connections with the campaign, are you in talks with Bernie himself or his staffers about this initiative?
NB: Yes, I have spoken to all of the above, but those were conversations with private individuals, so unfortunately I can’t discuss them.
TPT: What if Bernie Sanders or someone who shares his vision were to run for and secure the Democratic nomination in 2020? Would the People’s Party throw their support behind them, or would you choose to support another candidate who was not affiliated with the Democrats?
NB: The Democratic Party has done everything to affirm that it will not support progressives. There’s been a couple of special elections — one in Montana, one in Kansas — that the DNC is refusing to support progressives. We’ve seen that turnout for the Democratic Party in special elections has also been low; we’ve seen also that the Democratic Party is less popular than Trump and the Republican Party. We’ve seen that swing, anti-establishment voters who voted for Obama and for Trump believe that the Democratic Party’s policies favor the wealthy twice as much as would say the same for the Republican Party. That really shows that working inside the Democratic Party is a dead end, and I do not believe that a progressive presidential candidate would make it through the primary. I also don’t think that would satisfy what we are trying to achieve in a political revolution.
The political revolution needs to be more than one individual taking one office, like the Presidency. Even if we have a dream scenario, and I have no confidence that this would happen at all, where maybe Bernie ran again and he got the Democratic nomination and even became president, then he finds himself within a corporate party and a corporate Congress that opposes his agenda. The political revolution has to be more than about taking one office. We really have the opportunity to build the People’s Party over the next three and a half years, and Bernie built his political revolution in just one year. 57 percent of people in the United States want a major third party, and running a candidate for the People’s Party in 2020 would have a downballot effect and would sweep in People’s Party members into state offices and local offices across the country, Congress, and that would be the real political revolution.
TPT: Many people argue that the political system needs moderates on both the right and left to ensure bipartisanship and keep the wheels of government turning. Do you agree with this sentiment, or do you see it as necessary to vote out of office any politicians who aren’t progressive enough? Where do you draw the line between political pragmatism and ideological purity?
NB: There’s this convention in the media that teaches you to view the political system as a bell curve where most people are in the middle, and then you have the line down the middle with the Democratic Party on the left and the Republican party on the right, and the middle of the bell curve is where most people in the United States affiliate as. That’s the impression that the media and establishment politicians would have you believe about where people are ideologically. That’s not true at all. Issue polls show that down the line of issues from getting money out of politics to single-payer healthcare to free public college, people are instead far to the left of the establishment parties. That bell curve has shifted significantly to the left, and over on the right, two or three standard deviations away from the center, you have the Democratic and Republican parties.
These parties do not represent the ideological spectrum of the people; they represent the ideological spectrum of their donors, of the billionaire class, the Democrats being the left wing of the billionaire class and the Republicans being the right wing of the billionaire class. I think it’s simply about democracy. Our objective within a democracy is to create a system where the politicians actually represent people, and that requires that there would be progressive populists across all levels of government. And not everybody uses that term. Bernie is extremely popular with conservatives, especially if they get to know him more. In Vermont, he’s more popular with conservatives than Republican Party politicians; in fact, he was outpolling the Republican presidential primary candidates among Republicans. That tells you about how the media would have you believe that it’s left vs. right. It’s not. It’s not left vs. right anymore; it’s establishment vs anti-establishment because people are so fed up with how the system works.
TPT: And what do you think of Bernie’s use of the term “socialist” to describe his ideology and positions. Where does the People’s Party fall in terms of how socialist it can be considered?
NB: That would have to be a decision made by the people at the convention. We’d have to decide how far to the left we want it to be. One of the issues with the Green Party is that it has kind of been branded as this far-left party and people think it doesn’t represent them when of course it does on many issues. The party has to be a party that embraces working people who consider themselves of all kinds of political ideology and has to cut through that political ideology. That’s what Bernie does so well, and so that will be a decision that has to be made, of course, by the people as to how much we will go in that direction. It will obviously draw great inspiration from Bernie’s platform and, I think, from the Green platform.
TPT: And finally, what about your organizing and communications strategy is going to help you succeed where others have failed in terms of getting beyond the traditionally negative view of third parties in mainstream politics?
NB: What’s so unique about Bernie is that he already assembled the coalition. He did it during the primary; he put together this revolutionary coalition of people who are no longer content to put up with the establishment and with the status quo. But because of the nature of a campaign, that has kind of been dissolved back into the political system and it’s kind of lost its coherency. It’s no longer a unified strength and a unified power. Bernie showed us, though, on the campaign, that a unified Left is a system-changing force when it comes together. One of the things you’re seeing now is that the independent Left is going all kinds of directions. As I mentioned before, people are not content to be working inside the Democratic Party and that’s why they are continuing to leave the Democratic Party at a time when you would think they would be entering the Democratic Party in large numbers.
But in independent politics, the movement is fragmenting in many different directions because there’s no unifying, overarching leadership. If Bernie was to step in and he was to say “all right, enough with the Democrats; it’s time for a new party”, that would be what the progressive movement is doing. And we could re-form that incredible coalition of independents, young people, working people, people of color, indigenous people, labor unions that came together for Bernie as well, progressive organizations, this incredible coalition that came together under Bernie’s campaign and including so many people who have since become persuaded of the necessity for that. That’s what we have the ability to put together now, but only inside a new party. The power exists out there, and Bernie is the one who can put it together, having done it before.
TPT: Thank you so much for your time. We appreciate the work you’re trying to do, and we wish you the best of luck going forward.
