Even though Sen. Bernie Sanders has embraced his role of outreach chair for the Democratic Party since the 2016 election, many of his supporters have joined a movement to draft him to lead a new political party. Led by Sanders' former national political director, Nick Brana, who experienced how entrenched the Democratic Party is in corporate money and influence while lobbying superdelegates as part of Sanders' campaign, developed an organization called Draft Bernie in February 2017. Since the organization's founding, Brana has organized volunteers and staff across the country to gather signatures for a petition to give to Bernie Sanders that insists he starts a new party.

In April 2017, Dr. Cornel West formally endorsed and joined the Draft Bernie movement. "I was blessed to spend some time on the inside of the Democratic Party looking at the ways in which we could come up with some vision. And I was convinced that the Democratic Party was milquetoast, moribund.