It’s an old political adage: You can’t beat somebody with nobody.

At the moment, that’s the big problem for the handful of Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill — both new and incumbent — who are calling for new leaders in the House and Senate. It’s also a problem for the torrent of online commentators critical of the current Democratic leaders: Who, exactly, would replace them?

As it stands now, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York is on track to become the first Black person to ever wield the Speaker’s gavel next year. And Jeffries’ fellow Brooklynite, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, is expressing confidence he will regain the title of Senate Majority Leader in January.

No one has publicly announced bids to challenge either leader.

But as Democrats unpack the results of their electoral romp last week, their big electoral gains have done little to quell some of the long-simmering calls for new leadership — if detractors can find someone willing to run.

In the Senate, Maryland Democrat Chris Van Hollen has come the closest to publicly challenging Schumer.

The 67-year-old, who first joined the Senate in 2017 after serving for more than a decade in the House, has been in “listening mode” and said this week that he’s been making calls to his colleagues.

“There should not be a coronation,” Van Hollen said Tuesday. “We need to have a discussion in the caucus, and there needs to be a plan on how we’re going to use this large majority to deliver for the country.”

The argument Van Hollen and others who have declined to back the 75-year-old Schumer are making is, in part, that voters this month were calling for a total shakeup in Washington — not just a change in which party holds the gavels.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats, told MS NOW that this “election was about change.”

“People want new leadership here in the Senate, so I will not be supporting Chuck,” he said.

At a Tuesday press conference alongside Sanders, Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., said Democrats “need a new generation of leadership.”

“I said it before when I served in the House, I said it about Joe Biden, and I’m saying it here,” said Slotkin, who doesn’t typically find herself on an ideological island with Bernie Sanders.

She clarified, however, that she herself is “not actively seeking” the majority leader job.

“I am seeking change,” she said.

When MS NOW pressed Sen. Raphael Warnock about leadership questions, the Georgia Democrat was noncommittal, saying he’s open to hearing from colleagues interested in being leader. “The American people want change,” he said.

In particular, Warnock said he wants to know any candidate’s plans to address the “outsized impact of corporate powers in our politics, the corruption that we’re witnessing.”

Some incoming senators have also suggested they won’t support Schumer — perhaps not all that surprising, given that Schumer’s polling numbers are underwater. A recent NBC News poll found just 13% of registered voters view him positively. Fifty-three percent held a negative view.

Moments after his race was called last Tuesday, Kansas Democrat Adam Hamilton told MS NOW that he means “no disrespect” to Schumer, but he wants to find “people who unite us.”

There are clearly some Democrats who aren’t satisfied with Schumer’s leadership — and that discontent could be even deeper privately — but the Democratic leader since 2017 has some significant advantages heading into a potential leadership contest.

For one, while Van Hollen has signaled that he is considering a challenge, he hasn’t jumped into the race. For now, Schumer is the only declared candidate, and Democrats are leary of opening up an internecine leadership fight — particularly if it’s going to be fruitless and especially after this year’s sweeping Democratic wins.

Schumer said Tuesday he is “confident” he will be elected majority again. And in a New York Times piece over the weekend, Schumer aides claimed he had already secured enough commitments from Democratic senators to be elected leader in next month’s private vote.

Six months ago, few election prognosticators thought Democrats — facing a tough map — had a shot at flipping the Senate. Instead, fueled in no small part by some of Schumer’s recruits, they flipped the chamber and could end up netting as many as nine seats.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., made that case Tuesday, arguing Schumer deserves credit for strong recruits like Roy Cooper in North Carolina and Sherrod Brown in Ohio, saying they helped free up resources to expand the map elsewhere.

“We spent a year and a half talking about cost, corruption, and chaos. That was all Leader Schumer’s decisionmaking and effort to keep our caucus united,” Gillibrand said.

Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., echoed that sentiment, saying despite any differences he may have with Schumer, “these are historic numbers.”

“It’s time for us to unify,” Gallego said. “We’re going to work together as a caucus to put a plan together about how to move forward for what the country wants us to do.”

Others, like Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, and incoming Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, have also voiced support for Schumer.

And Sen. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., had an incredulous question when MS NOW asked him if he’s backing Schumer: “Does he have an opponent?”

Schumer’s critics, however, have a few factors working in their favor. The first is time.

The Senate Democratic leadership elections are not until December. With weeks to go, Van Hollen or another Democrat could mount a bid. And the nature of the vote could be beneficial to a challenger: It’s by secret ballot. That means senators could publicly back Schumer and privately vote against him, if they feared their opposition may come with some legislative consequences.

But the secrecy cuts both ways: There could be some senators who support Schumer privately but don’t want to back him publicly.

When MS NOW asked Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., whether he supported Schumer, he replied, “I’m getting into substance issues. We don’t talk about those kinds of things.” And Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said his discussions about caucus leadership are with caucus members. “I don’t feel the need to send anybody messages through the press about that topic,” he said.

Schumer notably just needs a simple majority of his caucus, and even if he only gets the support of 30 Democratic senators, that would still be more than enough votes to win.

That is a much lower bar than the math facing Jeffries in the House, where the next Democratic leader will need a majority of the entire chamber to become speaker.

While Jeffries is expected to waltz to the Speaker’s office, he will have to survive a public vote on the House floor where he needs a majority of the entire chamber — with Republicans all voting against him.

Normally that would be a tougher task, but Democrats are on pace to have nearly 260 House seats in a chamber of 435. Jeffries could lose more than 40 Democrats on the speakership vote — and he would still comfortably be elected.

And Jeffries’ allies don’t exactly expect a sudden turn against the 57-year-old New Yorker.

“We won’t have 15 votes. We won’t have more than one vote,” Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., told MS NOW — invoking the numerous rounds of votes it took for former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to finally get the gavel in 2023.

Jeffries himself dismissed questions about whether he’ll have the necessary support, playfully posing this question to reporters this week: “You think I don’t have the vote nailed down?”

“I’m going to work hard to talk to every single member about what we’ve been able to do together over the last two years, and what the opportunities are for us to do together in the next two years to deliver upon the dramatic change that the American people so decisively voted for,” he said.

Of course, there are still holdouts, particularly among the progressive ranks who are looking for policy assurances.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., told MS NOW this week that there’s “always a negotiation.”

“I want to make sure that there is an actual markup and vote on Medicare for All,” she said during an appearance on State of Play. “I want to make sure that we are taking on corruption and reining in big tech. I want to make sure that there’s a change to our Israel policy. These are the things that always end up in a negotiation.”

Some of the new incoming progressive Democrats have labeled themselves undecided, saying they want a conversation about how to deliver on — as Rep.-elect Melat Kiros of Colorado put it — the “populist politics that won the midterm cycle.”

Kiros said she’s looking for an agenda. “It’s not about the individual,” she said.

“It’s about what kind of priorities, what kind of floor votes, what kind of plan do we have to actually fight for the bold change the American people sent us here to do,” she added.

Still, there are other voices within the new class that are eager to wrap up the leadership discussion fast — worrying that any prolonged fight is counterproductive.

Rep.-elect Dan Koh of Massachusetts told MS NOW he is backing Jeffries, invoking, like Meeks, the protracted internecine GOP battle over McCarthy’s speakership bid.

“We need to learn from MAGA,” he said. “We need to get to the bottom of Trump’s corruption and lower costs for people. We can’t have months and months of acrimony.”

Outside of the Capitol, internet commentators have lit up social media about the race, knocking Jeffries as too timid in the face of Trump blowing up norms and calling for him to be replaced.

In response, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has posted a ‘School House Rock’ style video explaining how speakership elections actually work — and what the speaker role actually entails.

And former Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis. — who told MS NOW there’s “no question” Jeffries will be speaker — had a word of advice.

“At the end of the day, we need to get some big things done, and we can really move the needle on a lot of stuff,” Pocan said. “But not if people aren’t all rowing together — both inside and outside the building.”

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From MS Now.