Just a few days before the inauguration of Donald Trump, it’s fair to say that 2016 was a disastrous election year for the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton, whom insiders claimed was almost guaranteed to win, lost; Republicans gained the majority in both the House and Senate and Trump will almost certainly place one conservative justice on the Supreme Court, if not more.

A colossal defeat like this should cause the party to be introspective and ask: where did we go wrong? An obvious answer: don’t nominate a person with a scandal-laden career, propped up by special interest money and reeking of the very worst corruption Washington has to offer in an election year dictated by populist sentiment.

As one might expect, party officials are preparing for the future. Midterm elections are coming up in 2018 for Congressional and Senate seats, as well as gubernatorial elections. The Democratic Party is also preparing for the 2020 presidential election by looking at prospects who could challenge Trump (assuming he runs for re-election.) People on the left have been scrambling and throwing around names like Joe Biden, Tim Kaine, Elizabeth Warren, Michelle Obama, Tulsi Gabbard. Some pundits unironically think we should nominate a celebrity, like Beyoncé or Oprah. One name, though, that has gotten some traction in recent days and weeks is New Jersey Senator Cory Booker.

Booker, the former mayor of Newark, is generally viewed as a young, promising left-leaning Senator in a similar vein to Barack Obama. However, many on the left say grooming him for a potential campaign is a bad idea; recent events might be proving them right. It’s becoming clear that the Cory Booker the media is portraying may not be the same Cory Booker that progressives might feel comfortable with.

Remember that moment during the Republican primaries, where Chris Christie called out Marco Rubio on his repetitive talking point, to which Rubio responded in a way that made me think my TV was broken by repeating and stuttering though the exact statement two more times? It virtually ended his campaign.

Why? Because he was a “fresh," young, well-polished politician who had been groomed by establishment leaders and donors. Rubio was manicured to be the nominee and to challenge the self-made campaign of Trump. Like Bush and others, people saw through the act and he crumbled.

Many on the left fear that the same could be done to someone like Booker, a relatively inexperienced politician whose campaigns are heavily reliant on special interest money and a past of ineffectual leadership. Olivia Nuzzi, writing an article for the Daily Beast, notes how Booker wasn’t entirely well-received even in his own state, and even faced allegations of corruption during his tenure as mayor.

In recent days, however, Booker has propelled himself to the spotlight for two reasons: one good and one bad, and only one of which was largely covered by the media. On the plus side, he challenged Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) during his confirmation hearing for Attorney General. Sessions has, shall I put it mildly, a spotty record with civil rights. He has a history of opposing voting rights legislation as well as making racially incendiary comments, like saying a white civil rights lawyer was a race traitor.

Despite having enacted legislation with him to award civil rights leaders with the Congressional Gold Medal, Cory Booker took to the proverbial stand to testify against Sessions during his hearing. Evidently there’s a tradition that senators don’t speak against fellow senators if they are in the running for an appointment position, a tradition that Booker broke, saying “Sen. Sessions has not demonstrated a commitment to a central requirement of the job- to aggressively pursue the congressional mandate of civil rights, equal rights, and justice for all…” This earned him widespread praise for his stance, although Sessions will likely still be confirmed. Astute, and somewhat cynical, political analysts suspected that this would help put Booker’s name on the national map and lay the groundwork for a potential presidential run.

He promptly ruined this groundwork the next day. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a beloved progressive leader in the wake of the 2016 election, proposed an amendment that would allow citizens to purchase and import drugs from Canada, effectively reducing the price of American drugs. This is idea has been proposed by both Republicans and Democrats alike over the years and would help prevent, or at least mitigate, price-gouging from pharmaceutical companies. Sanders’ amendment failed, even with bipartisan support from Republicans like Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rand Paul (R-KY), hardly progressive-friendly politicians.

Sen. Booker claims the bill failed because it lacked a provision to ensure safety regulations; voting for a later amendment proposed by Sen. Wyden (D-OR), which met the same fate as Sanders’ amendment. But this is a nonsensical excuse: why do you need safety regulations when A) the drugs are manufactured in the US by American companies regulated by the FDA and B) Canada has its own health regulations on importation which these drugs surely met. Surely it couldn’t be because cheaper drug prices would harm the pharmaceutical industry’s bottom-dollar, an industry which Sen. Booker is beholden to, right?

Oh.

So, here is where the Senator falls out of favor with progressives. As it turns out, Sen. Booker has taken in hundreds of thousands of dollars from pharmaceutical companies, and he’s just demonstrated that he’s willing to put special interest first in his vote. That’s the tip of the iceberg--Booker is also incredibly pro-Wall Street. In his re-election campaign alone, he took almost $2 million dollars from their sector. Goldman Sachs alone is his 5^th highest donor. And there’s no sign he’s changed his mind; throwing Sen. Sanders under the bus for “demonizing” Wall Street. Even if he took this money with the best of intentions, just the PR alone makes this a nightmarish scenario.

If there’s one thing this election, and others around the world, has taught us, it’s that populism and anti-establishment sentiment is on the rise. It’s the reason that Trump won, and that Sanders almost became the Democratic nominee. Remember that Sanders had the vast majority of support from left-leaning youngsters in this election, and more young people will continue to enter the political fray.

Progressives like Sanders and Warren will continue to grow in popularity, despite the best efforts of more establishment politicians. If the Democrats, or liberals in general, want to win future elections: they need to learn from their mistakes with Hillary and ditch the pro-Wall Street, pro-big business candidates before it’s too late.

In this case, that politician is Cory Booker.