Anthony Weiner Isn't Buying Bernie Sanders' Presidential Bid

Unsuccessful New York City mayoral candidate and former Rep. Anthony Weiner admitted Saturday that he just doesn't get Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) bid for the Democratic nomination for president.

Weiner -- acknowledging his wife, Huma Abedin, is a longtime aide to Sanders' challenger Hillary Clinton -- wrote in a column published by Business Insider Saturday that he doesn't understand why the independent senator is vying for the support of a party "he always avoided joining."

"After a career of steadfastly insisting that the Democratic party was not his home, now he wants to not only be a member of the party but its standard bearer? What changed?" Weiner asked in the column.

Weiner described serving in Congress with Sanders in the early 2000s, saying he satiated his homesickness for the five boroughs by challenging Sanders on his party affiliation, often igniting a "bombastic reaction" from the senator.

"He would tell me that I shouldn’t confuse the fact that our voting records generally matched with party agreement," Weiner wrote in the column. "He was a proud socialist and thought the institutional Democratic Party was too cautious and lacking imagination. As much as I prodded, I would never get him to think about joining the Democrats for a moment."

Sanders launched his bid for the Democratic nomination for president in April. He's said he characterizes himself as an "independent Democrat." While Sanders has been open about his discomfort with the Democratic Party, he recognizes the "dilemma" of trying to run as a third-party candidate, given the organizing power of the Republicans and Democrats.

The senator stands 40.4 points behind Clinton, according to HuffPost Pollster, which aggregates all publicly available polling data: