Will the Democratic Establishment Do Another “Bernie Betrayal” Like 2016 and Shoe In Schumer and Jeffries?
After a midterm wave driven by progressive energy, party leaders face resistance over unpopularity, donor ties, and the politics of continuity.
Democrats just delivered a sweeping midterm victory, taking the House and Senate with comfortable margins. Hakeem Jeffries is widely expected to become Speaker of the House—the first Black person in that role—and Chuck Schumer is positioned to return as Senate Majority Leader. Progressive groups and some incoming lawmakers are calling this a continuation of establishment power, drawing explicit parallels to the 2016 Democratic primary and the DNC’s treatment of Bernie Sanders.
The comparison is emotionally potent for many on the left. It is also structurally imperfect.
What Happened in 2016
In July 2016, WikiLeaks released roughly 19,000 emails from DNC officials. They showed clear institutional hostility toward Sanders and favoritism toward Hillary Clinton. Staffers discussed using Sanders’ religion against him with Southern voters, mocked his campaign as disorganized, and explored media narratives to undermine him. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, then DNC chair, resigned amid the fallout. The DNC issued a formal apology to Sanders and his supporters for “inexcusable remarks.”
There was no documented evidence that the DNC altered vote counts or directly rigged primary results. What the emails revealed was a party apparatus that viewed Sanders as an outsider and preferred the establishment candidate. Sanders himself stated there was “no question” the DNC had supported Clinton over him. The episode confirmed long-standing progressive suspicions about party neutrality and damaged trust that has never fully recovered.
The 2026 Landscape
The current fight is different in key ways. Congressional party leaders are not chosen by the DNC. They are elected by the members of each chamber’s party caucus, typically by secret ballot in organizational meetings after the election but before the new Congress begins in January. The Speaker is then formally elected by the full House. Jeffries and Schumer are the existing leaders; continuity is the default path unless a challenger consolidates support inside the caucus.
That said, the pushback is real. Progressive organization Indivisible has called for new Senate leadership, arguing voters wanted “a new generation of Democratic fighters,” not a return to the status quo. Several incoming Democratic senators—including Abdul El-Sayed (Michigan), Troy Jackson (Maine), Peggy Flanagan (Minnesota), and others—have publicly declined to back Schumer or called for new leadership. A 'Change' petition urging House Democrats to reject Jeffries as Speaker has gathered over eight hundred thousand signatures. Some progressive polling before the election suggested limited enthusiasm for both men among Democratic voters in key districts.
Schumer and Jeffries have framed the results as a mandate to govern on affordability and deliver results against a Republican White House, with allies arguing the party won big under their existing structures. Yet both leaders remain deeply unpopular—Schumer’s leadership has drawn positive ratings as low as 13% in some polls, and both men rank among the least favorably viewed national political figures. In key primaries, candidates they backed or preferred often lost to more progressive challengers: Jeffries endorsed incumbents Dan Goldman and Adriano Espaillat in New York, both of whom were defeated by progressive and DSA-aligned candidates, while Schumer’s preferred moderates were also beaten in several races. By contrast, progressive Democrats entered the general election with clear momentum—figures such as Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Troy Jackson in Maine won competitive Senate seats after running against the establishment, and left-aligned House candidates scored upsets that expanded the progressive wing heading into the new Congress.
These tensions are compounded by specific policy and political choices that have fueled progressive distrust. Both Schumer and Jeffries have long received substantial funding from pro-Israel political action committees and related groups; AIPAC publicly congratulated them by name after the midterms, and critics have highlighted Jeffries’ consistent support for U.S. military aid to Israel alongside Schumer’s past statements about keeping the party’s left flank “pro-Israel.” On the Iran war, both leaders have since the election publicly called for it to end and pointed to Congress’s power of the purse, yet many progressives remain skeptical of how forcefully they will confront the conflict given their broader relationships. Jeffries’ private meeting with Jared Kushner earlier this year—where the two discussed potential areas of cooperation on housing, immigration, and costs of living—drew sharp progressive criticism as evidence of too much willingness to seek common ground with the Trump orbit rather than pursue aggressive oversight or “retribution.” Combined with the sense that neither leader prioritizes more expansive policies such as Medicare for All that animated progressive primary winners, these factors have left a significant portion of the Democratic base wary that the new majorities will be led by figures more inclined toward continuity and accommodation than the sharper break many voters appear to want.
Is This the Same Kind of “Betrayal”?
The 2016 episode centered on the national party apparatus and its leadership appearing to tilt the field in a presidential primary where voters themselves were choosing the nominee. The present situation is different in form: elected House and Senate Democrats will select their own leaders in closed caucus votes. There is no formal primary, no superdelegate system, and no national party committee that can directly install Schumer or Jeffries.
Even so, progressive critics treat the distinction as largely procedural. They argue that the Democratic establishment—through donor networks, institutional endorsements, leadership PACs, and the simple inertia of incumbency—has already shaped the outcome long before any caucus ballot is cast. From this perspective, the near-certain elevation of two long-serving New York leaders who remain deeply unpopular with the party’s activist base, who backed multiple candidates who lost in competitive primaries, and who maintain close ties to traditional fundraising and foreign-policy constituencies, functions as another form of top-down continuity. It is less a single act of committee intervention and more the predictable result of an establishment that prioritizes experience, fundraising capacity, and legislative continuity over the economic-populist and anti-war message that energized much of the midterm electorate.
Defenders respond that caucus members, not outside activists or the national party, ultimately decide, and that experienced leaders who can hold a majority together and negotiate are what governing requires. Leadership elections remain ahead—House Democrats are expected to formalize their choices in mid-November, Senate Democrats later. Whether progressive opposition is strong enough to produce a genuine contest, or remains a vocal but minority view that the majority of members can absorb, will be settled by the elected Democrats themselves. The question is whether that internal process still feels, to a large part of the party’s base, like another establishment outcome imposed rather than earned.
The Larger Pattern
Parties on both sides repeatedly face the same dynamic after strong performances: the people who held power when the victory arrived tend to keep it, while the base that supplied the energy wants different priorities or faces. The 2016 emails were unusually explicit because they were private. Most internal power struggles stay quieter. What is public now is a progressive effort to treat the midterm mandate as a demand for leadership turnover, and an establishment preference for stability.
Whether that preference constitutes a “betrayal” depends on what one believes the Democratic Party is for and whom it is accountable to. The institutional mechanisms differ from 2016. The political grievance does not.
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