Democrat Joel Kotkin documents the Democrats surge to the left:

The new left Democrats have little interest in embracing Obama's clever meme of portraying himself as a moderate, bipartisan figure, something that helped him both win suburban voters and raise a ton of money from parts of the corporate elite. Instead of expanding crony capitalism, which has been the Obama default, but the new Left openly seeks to reshape the economic system itself.

This leftward shift has been intensified by the growing geographic bifurcation of our political culture. Just as the Republican's rightward shift reflected the domination of the traditionalist South and, to some extent, the socially conservative Great Plains, the Democratic march to the left similarly mirrors the party's growing reliance on its urban Northeast and West Coast base. [. . .]

In the new Democratic calculus, greens, wealthy venture capitalists, Hollywood producers, feminists and ethnic warlords matter much more than coal miners, factory or construction workers.