If there was any doubt that traditional black leadership has lost its footing in this era of Black Lives Matter activism and young people’s revolt against the establishment, it was made crystal clear Thursday when the political action committee of the Congressional Black Caucus threw its endorsement to Hillary Clinton.

With Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described Democratic socialist, and his legion of young adherents pushing Ms. Clinton, once considered the de facto Democratic presidential nominee, further and further left of her normally cautious and middle-of-the-road politics, this was no time for such an influential endorsement.

For perhaps the first time in the country’s history, one of the major and most pivotal fights between the two Democratic contenders for the presidency is over which of them is best suited to push through the social and criminal justice reforms necessary to complete the full emancipation of blacks in this country.

Even if the caucus believes Ms. Clinton is the safest political bet, why show their hand at this early stage of the contest? Why not let the contest ride for a while and see just how much more progressive Ms. Clinton becomes in order to douse the raging fire Mr. Sanders has lit under establishment politics?

Not only did the CBC PAC endorse Ms. Clinton, but members went to extraordinary lengths to discount Mr. Sanders’ social justice record, suggesting that he was not as committed to the cause over the years as Ms. Clinton.

They also launched a Republican-like attack on Mr. Sanders' social policies.

“When you start saying ‘free college,’ ‘free health care,’ the only thing you’re leaving out is a free car and a free home,” Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., said of Mr. Sanders' tuition-free public colleges and universal health care policy proposals.

“Who is going to pay for it? How are you going to pay for it? That is our responsibility to make sure that young people know that, ... You don’t just go to who says ‘revolution.'”

But in rush to shore up Ms. Clinton’s candidacy, these congressional black leaders are exhibiting a disturbing deafness to the message of this generation's young civil right activists — that the civil rights practices of the past have reached a plateau of diminishing returns for blacks and that it is high time to break the political mold that produces disproportionately high poverty, unemployment and incarceration rates - among a host of negative social outcomes - in their community.

While Ms. Clinton shares many of Mr. Sanders' views, she believes she can work with the establishment to get her ideas through while Mr. Sanders believes the establishment is the major roadblock to achieving real social and economic justice.

Many of today’s young civil rights activists share this latter view of establishment politics, and in marginalizing Mr. Sanders, members of the CBC are themselves signaling their attachment to the status quo.

And just as how some wonder whether Ms. Clinton’s professed support for Democratic progressive ideas will be tempered by the contributions she gets from Wall Street lobbyists, some are also wondering whether the CBC PAC is being influenced by the lobbyists on its board.

Lee Fang writing for the The Intercept, for example, noted last week that "Members of the CBC PAC board include Daron Watts, a lobbyist for Purdue Pharma, the maker of the highly addictive opioid OxyContin; Mike Mckay and Chaka Burgess, both lobbyists for Navient, the student loan giant that was spun off of Sallie Mae; former Rep. Albert Wynn, D-Md., a lobbyist who represents a range of clients, including work last year on behalf of Lorillard Tobacco, the maker of Newport cigarettes; and William A. Kirk, who lobbies for a cigar industry trade group on a range of tobacco regulations.”

Mr. Fang also noted that “a significant percentage of the $7,000 raised this cycle by the CBC PAC” was donated by lobbyists like “Vic Fazio, who represents Philip Morris and served for years as a lobbyist to Corrections Corporation of America, and David Adams, a former Clinton aide who now lobbies for Wal-Mart, the largest gun distributor in America."

I do not question the CBC commitment to a progressive agenda. It is their apparent self-applied progressive limitations and their embrace of business-as-usual politics that troubles me and I would suspect also troubles the young civil rights activists who are drawn to Mr. Sanders' campaign.