Last January during one of the early skirmishes in the Democratic Primaries, Bernie Sanders took a rare direct shot at Hillary Clinton and her political support group, the DC cabal of liberal NGOs. Sanders had been badgered for weeks by the media for his failure to attract more endorsements from public interest groups, like Planned Parenthood, NARAL and the Human Rights Campaign, even though his record on many of their core issues was much less blemished than Clinton’s.
Finally, Sanders snapped back: “You know what? Hillary Clinton has been around there for a very, very long time. Some of these groups are, in fact, part of the establishment.”
These groups responded with mock outrage, clustering before the cameras of MSDNC to denounce Bernie. How could Sanders possibly call us part of the “Establishment”! It’s ridiculous! He should be ashamed of himself!! He must apologize!!!
But Sanders was absolutely right, of course. The Beltway network of liberal NGOS–from the Sierra Club to NOW–have become little more than dutiful subsidiaries of the Democratic Party. Many of them have enabled and abetted the party’s wholesale lurch toward neoliberalism without so much as a bleat, while howling against almost every minor infraction made by a Republican politician.
Sanders deserved credit for pointing out the obvious, but he almost immediately backed away from his comments, which pretty much symbolizes the entire course of his advance-and-retreat campaign. Again…