I don't know who coined the phrase though.

libertarians (sometimes) posing as Democrats on DU.

society especially one as corporate dominated and capitalistic as the United States - of course the political class are Pro-corporatist and have been at least since the rise to power of the modern corporation. It is hardly a secret that the entire campaign system and lobbying system are overwhelmingly dominated by corporations and that is true whether the Democrats or Republicans are in power. Come on!! No one can possibly be so naive to not know that. FDR and LBJ were Pro-corporatist Democrats just as much as Clinton and Obama. The difference is LBJ and FDR were Presidents during an era when the unions were a lot more powerful and alternatives to corporate dominated capitalist society were still being espoused in rather mainstream debate.

To not be Pro-corporatist would require politicians who would NOT take their money and who would build their political influence from other sources than the corporate lobbying industrial complex. How many politicians are like that? I suppose Bernie Sanders and no more than half a dozen others.

As the DLC formed out of ashes of the 80's presidential elections one of it's primary tenets was populist economic policy (sensu pro-labor policy) was a loser.

That belief emerged as something of a shared experience by the southern governors' (who dominated the early DLC) personal experiences involved in the courting of industry to their states during the realignment of US industry from north to south.

It's hard to say if populist economic policy that had been at the heart of democratic politics during the years of democratic success in the 20th century was really a loser, or whether it was swamped by the gains of southern economic development during the realignment.

Certainly the shift away from the politics of economic populism across the Clinton years left many in the labor movement feeling left behind. Concern around that emerged again for left-behind working class democrats who felt that the recovery packages following Bushes 2008 great recession involved too much financials friendly economic policy put forward by Obama appointments from Wall St.