If we want to avoid a sim­i­lar night­mare in the future, we have to parse this election’s lessons and fig­ure out who is to blame — not for cheap point-scor­ing, but to make sure we don’t make the same mis­takes again. That means we have to talk about how Amer­i­can union lead­ers helped hand this race to Trump.

Don­ald Trump is going to be the next pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. I feel a wild urge to scrub my hands with steel wool and bleach after typ­ing those words — my fin­gers feel filthy.

It was­n’t on pur­pose, of course. It’s no secret that a Trump pres­i­den­cy will be absolute­ly dis­as­trous for labor. A nation­al right-to-work law, Wis­con­sin’s vicious­ly anti-union Gov. Scott Walk­er as Sec­re­tary of Labor, a pro-cor­po­rate Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board — all could be in the cards under Trump.

Union lead­ers want­ed to pre­vent this. But their idea for how to do so was­n’t any dif­fer­ent from the rest of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty estab­lish­ment: going all-in for a cen­trist, ​“safe” can­di­date like Hillary Clin­ton at a time when the elec­torate was hun­gry for some­one who would shake up the polit­i­cal sys­tem and who spoke to the pain so many Amer­i­cans feel.

Labor lead­ers should have been in touch with this sen­ti­ment bet­ter than any­one. Their mem­bers — whether school teach­ers in big cities or laid-off fac­to­ry work­ers in the Rust Belt — have suf­fered immense­ly in the age of aus­ter­i­ty. There were warn­ing signs. Unions haven’t released their own inter­nal polling data, but Work­ing Amer­i­ca said in Jan­u­ary that Trump’s anti-free trade mes­sage was res­onat­ing in Ohio and Penn­syl­va­nia, states hit par­tic­u­lar­ly hard by dein­dus­tri­al­iza­tion. On Elec­tion Day, exit polls var­ied wide­ly, but many showed union house­holds vot­ing for Clin­ton by either slim mar­gins (CNN put it at just 51 per­cent) or by nowhere near as large a mar­gin as they did for Barack Oba­ma in 2012.

Yet rather than act­ing as clar­i­on voic­es cut­ting through Belt­way sta­t­ic to insist on choos­ing a can­di­date who spoke to work­ing-class suf­fer­ing and dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the sta­tus quo, labor lead­ers echoed the myopic vision of the pun­dits who insist­ed it was ​“her turn.”

That the Demo­c­ra­t­ic king- (and queen-)makers would do this is mad­den­ing but unsur­pris­ing. It’s con­sis­tent with the par­ty’s right­ward drift over the last few decades. What makes union lead­ers’ actions so astound­ing is that they reject­ed a stal­wart cham­pi­on of their agen­da who raged against the bil­lion­aire class, walked pick­et lines with work­ers and spoke obses­sive­ly about widen­ing inequal­i­ty. Instead, they opt­ed for a mil­lion­aire for­mer Wal­mart board mem­ber with a check­ered past on labor issues whose cam­paign refused to endorse a $15 min­i­mum wage and couldn’t even muster a tweet in favor of low-wage workers.

Some union lead­ers’ sins are greater than oth­ers’. Ran­di Wein­garten, pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers (AFT), has long been engaged in what edu­ca­tion schol­ar Lois Wein­er has called a ​“pub­lic love fest” for the Clin­tons. As I not­ed recent­ly, the AFT has giv­en the Clin­ton Foun­da­tion some­where between $1 mil­lion and $5 mil­lion under Wein­garten for rea­sons that remain unclear. Her name was float­ed in some labor cir­cles as a poten­tial Clin­ton cab­i­net member.

In July 2015, AFT was the first nation­al union to endorse Clin­ton—much ear­li­er than the AFT had endorsed can­di­dates in the past and like­ly over the objec­tions of large num­bers of its mem­bers who backed Sanders. From emails released by Wik­iLeaks, we know that Wein­garten promised to act as an attack dog for Clin­ton against anoth­er union that had endorsed Sanders in the primary.

Tom Buf­fen­barg­er, then-pres­i­dent of the Machin­ists, even helped secret­ly move his union’s pres­i­den­tial endorse­ment up to endorse Clin­ton as soon as pos­si­ble — despite the protests of some of the union’s mem­bers who pre­ferred Sanders. The Ser­vice Employ­ees Inter­na­tion­al Union was all-in for Clin­ton since the begin­ning, despite the fact that she refused to endorse a $15 min­i­mum wage that it had made into a nation­al bat­tle cry.

To be sure, not all union lead­ers blind­ly went ​“with her.” The Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers of Amer­i­ca polled its mem­bers and found rank-and-file sup­port for Sanders. The union endorsed him. Nation­al Nurs­es Unit­ed (NNU) also played a key role in the Sanders’ cam­paign. Its exec­u­tive direc­tor, RoseAnn DeMoro, was often on the cam­paign trail and NNU played a key role in orga­niz­ing the People’s Sum­mit con­ver­gence in Chica­go after Sanders lost the pri­ma­ry, where activists debat­ed next steps for the move­ment that he helped spur.

The Amer­i­can Postal Work­ers Union, under recent reform lead­er­ship, also endorsed Sanders. ​“Sen. Bernie Sanders stands above all oth­ers as a true cham­pi­on of postal work­ers and oth­er work­ers through­out the coun­try,” the union’s pres­i­dent, Mark Dimond­stein, said then. ​“Pol­i­tics as usu­al has not worked. It’s time for a polit­i­cal revolution.”

Yet these lead­ers were in the minor­i­ty. Why? Most union pres­i­dents are far removed from the sen­ti­ments of rank-and-file mem­bers. Labor lead­ers like Wein­garten hang out in elite cir­cles, see­ing them­selves less as lead­ers of social move­ments whose every­day actions are guid­ed by their mem­bers and more as peers of the kind of cen­trist Wash­ing­ton insid­ers that made up the top brass of Clinton’s campaign.

Rad­i­cals have long argued that Amer­i­can labor lead­ers are not only iso­lat­ed from their rank and file, but actu­al­ly have a set of inter­ests that are dis­tinct from their mem­bers. No pres­i­dent wants to see their mem­ber­ship rolls dec­i­mat­ed, but they also don’t want to see an empow­ered rank and file inde­pen­dent­ly orga­niz­ing actions like strikes or cam­paigns on behalf of strong­ly pro-work­er pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates. Work­ers who are empow­ered to wage fights at work and in pol­i­tics can also get togeth­er with their cowork­ers to boot con­ser­v­a­tive, cor­rupt or incom­pe­tent lead­ers out of office. And if labor is going to avoid such astro­nom­i­cal blun­ders as Trump’s vic­to­ry in the future, rank-and-file work­ers will have to lead the charge against their Clin­ton-back­ing leaders.

It will go down as one of the great ironies of Amer­i­can polit­i­cal his­to­ry: faced with a moment of record inequal­i­ty and sear­ing eco­nom­ic pain, a deeply unpop­u­lar, wealthy dem­a­gogue told vot­ers he under­stood their mis­ery and would reverse it. To take him on, lead­ers of the orga­nized work­ing class opt­ed for the can­di­date whose ties to Wall Street were far stronger than her sup­port for labor and argued that things real­ly weren’t that bad out there. To do so, they reject­ed a wild­ly pop­u­lar, diehard union-back­ing eco­nom­ic pop­ulist, think­ing the cen­trist was the safe bet. She wasn’t. Now, the work­ing class will pay the price.

Full dis­clo­sure: In These Times staff are mem­bers of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers of Amer­i­ca, and the union is a spon­sor of the mag­a­zine. Spon­sors play no role in edi­to­r­i­al content.