Will Bernie Sanders Take Over The Green Party?

Bernie Sanders has accepted the fact that he won't be the Democratic nominee for president, but he's still not entirely out of the presidential race. Sanders' name may still pop up on the ballot come November, but definitely not under the Democratic Party line. According to new reports, Green Party leader Jill Stein has asked Bernie Sanders to take over the progressive party's ticket. So we may be feeling the Bern a little longer in America.

The Guardian reported Saturday that Stein asked Sanders to consider the possibility of working with the Green Party in this coming presidential election. She even said the Sanders could lead the party and place his name at the top of the ticket.

“If he saw that you can’t have a revolutionary campaign in a counter-revolutionary party, he’d be welcomed to the Green party," Stein said. "He could lead the ticket and build a political movement."

Stein reportedly asked Sanders to jump on the Green Party ticket in an email, though the senator from Vermont has yet to respond. In an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! on Saturday, Stein revealed that she had previously asked Sanders to join the Green Party ticket in the past — the 2012 presidential election.

Stein has been considered the presumptive Green Party nominee for the 2016 presidential election. She was also the Green Party nominee for the 2012 election, finishing with just 0.36 percent of the vote. (She received under 500,000 votes in all.)

According to The Guardian, Stein is hoping the Green Party will have a larger impact in the fall. She told the news source she believes the progressive party could garner 15 percent of the popular vote.

With Sanders on the ticket, the Green Party may attract thousands of more voters, but would it be enough to make a smashing political statement? The last time the Green Party made an impact was the 2000 election, when candidate Ralph Nader pulled in 2.7 percent of the popular vote and became a punching bag for Democratic politicians, who believed Nader caused Al Gore to ultimately lose the controversial election. But Ross Perot remains one of the most successful third-party candidates in U.S. history, winning almost 19 percent of the popular vote when he ran as an independent in the 1992 presidential election.

Still, Stein has long been antagonistic toward the Democratic Party, and she called on Sanders to break away from the Democrats in the upcoming election. "If he continues to declare his full faith in the Democratic party, it will leave many of his supporters very disappointed," Stein said.

Stein added to Goodman on Democracy Now! that she's "not holding [her] breath" over her offer to Sanders. She told Goodman: "[M]y hope is that the movement will continue. And we’ve offered—I’ve offered, basically, to put everything on the table and to see how we can work together."