I concur with your assessment.

The change in attitudes that these companies detected with their market research is exactly what got Obama elected. And his re-election proved it wasn't a fluke. Even the popular vote of the Trump-Clinton contest proved that the voting demographic had changed forever.

Like the realization that not even the marketing execs cared what they thought any more, the realization that they could no longer count on their cultural hegemony to gain power any longer, was devastating. They managed to hang on to it briefly by means of an electoral college technicality, but they realize how tenuous that is. They now know what it feels like to becoming gradually invisible, and powerless.

This explains a lot of their reflexive Obama-Clinton hatred. A black man and a woman are symbols of their coming irrelevance on two fronts, race and gender, ideas that Progressives have been clubbing them with since the 1960s. It also explains why they're so sensitive to charges of racism and misogyny. As far as they're concerned, they are not bigots, those are just the laws of God and physics.

And it is also a warning to the rest of us. They will do whatever it takes to avoid losing the little power they still have, and that unscrupulous demagogues will find them irresistible as a source of votes and a fertile compost to sow the seeds of envy and hatred.

Thanks for the insight. I've often thought the same, but I've never been able to articulate it in such a precise fashion.