Comment by auganov

He's a Democrat senator and got Biden to essentially support most of his platform. Running as an independent or 3rd party would be political suicide and wouldn't help his agenda.

But aside from that most countries have a single process to get on the ballot country-wide. In US you'd have to navigate this process for each state.

I'm sure Bernie could pull that off. But it is definitely the reason you see many fewer randoms making a dent.

Also if you consider the way primaries work in both parties it's way more transparent and approachable than most other places. Many major parties around the world don't have a primary process at all. And even when they do it's usually limited to insiders. So if you want to change things you're almost forced to create a party by default.

If you couldn't make it in a primary of a party that's closer to your beliefs than the general population - how can you expect to make it on a national level?