<<What Clinton didn't realize, according to the authors, was that some of her fellow Democratic senators - whose support she thought she had - actually preferred Obama.
<<"The sort of mythology is that Hillary Clinton was the establishment candidate. That Obama had to run kind of a guerilla campaign against her. In fact, Obama was the establishment candidate. There were a number of United States senators, Democratic leaders, who secretly and privately encouraged him to run behind the Clinton's back," Halperin said.>>
Neither Hillary nor Obama could have been a serious contender for Party leadership without the prior vetting of the military-industrial complex, which through the MSM can relegate candidates to "crank" or "loser" status from the outset - - see Ron Paul, see Dennis Kucinich, see Howard Dean for that matter. Although the exact control mechanisms aren't always clear, the end result is always the same - - "No matter who you vote for, the government always wins." If the establishment - - and I don't mean the Party establishment, I mean the military-industrial complex (to use Eisenhower's phrase) or the Power Elite (C. Wright Mills) - - realizes that they have a maverick on their hands (and I mean a REAL maverick, not a John McCain) then that person is choked off from MSM exposure, favourable comment from the MSM roster of talking heads, etc. and support is shifted to those "reliables" who have the best chance of beating him.
Obama drew a lot of Wall Street support in his campaign, which should have been a tip-off then and there that this guy was no populist. Some bloggers DID see through both Obama and Hillary, and kudos to them. Some were so determined to oust Bush that they silenced or played down their doubts about Obama, thinking perhaps that this time, this one time, things would be different. Hah!
Frankly, I don't see how you can have serious contests within either party between "establishment" and "non-establishment" candidates. The term "establishment" is itself ambiguous - - there is a Party hierarchy, the top of which may be considered the "establishment" within the Democratic Party, i.e., the Party bosses, but all of the bosses work for "the establishment" in the sense of the word in which it refers not to a Party establishment but to the military-industrial complex.
I think the progressives or whatever they want to call themselves now that they're scared of the "L"-word just aren't getting their message out and that is DESPITE the radical development of communications that was ushered in by the internet. There are entire demographic sectors that they are just not reaching.