Some commentators and Sanders supporters have speculated that Bernie could become the leader of a left-wing opposition faction analogous to the Tea Party after the election. It won’t happen, for the following reasons:
- Sanders doesn’t have enough friends in Congress to create a faction of any respectable size.
- The Tea Party has the ability to wreak havoc because shutting down the federal government is completely consistent with its anti-government ideology. A left-wing, pro-government faction logically can’t do that. In other words, you can’t plausibly expect to increase the size and power of the government by threatening to paralyze it–what would happen to the people you are trying to help in the meantime?