2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Bernie may be more of a Democrat than the Democrats. [View all]DirkGently
(12,151 posts)branding being pushed so hard by corporate interests. Money people would very much like to turn the Democratic brand into nothing more than a more socially liberal version of the same platform Republicans are selling.
I think the fevered culture war the Republicans have been using to whip up their base is annoying the money people in the donor class and their corporate brethren. They don't really care one way or the other about civil rights or women's reproductive freedom or logical immigration policy or anything else. They want unregulated markets, no leverage for labor; no national ownership of resources or government-supplied social safety nets.
So a lot of corporatists have slid over under the Democratic banner. For some reason, they're comfortable with the "progressive" brand, and are working furiously to make sure that has nothing whatsoever to do with economic issues.
The rationale they typically deploy is that anyone not on Wall Street's good side is "unelectable" (read: won't be able to get enough corporate / billionaire support to compete).
Sanders is screwing that up, and you have to assume they don't like it.