The segments of American politics that identify as “liberal” and align with the Democratic Party, who hold this view are the kind of politicians a lot of people complain loudly about having been corrupted by donors and lobbyists. It’s also important to remember how decades of social stigma have been welded onto anything that doesn’t sound enough like “good old American free market capitalism” as the first creeping tendrils of “evil communism” … to the point where the average American has little idea there’s any difference between “socialism” and “communism”… and would prefer their political representatives to not say anything that sounds like either of them… this perpetuates the need to make sure the economy is always good because there’s little alternative and voters don’t seem to turn out for candidates that make them feel bad and the whole system devolves into what you can see today.