I tried to reply to this earlier but was put on time-out by the mods for replying to other comments. Literally has never happened to me before, until today, when I started challenging Dem establishment lines.

There's way too much to say in one comment, but just to summarize:

The "establishment" organized a quite effective takedown just prior to Super Tuesday. It was in retrospect a classic rug-pull: flood the field with candidates who provide each segment of identitarians a race-horse they can get behind; dilute the rhetoric and box out the candidates labelled "extreme" while simultaneously ripping off and diluting their core policies; pull all candidates except one, have all the other candidates endorse them, and bet (correctly) on the assumption that people don't have the time or inclination to look at all beyond the news headlines to inform their vote.

I am happy to dive much deeper into this if you are interested. There are many angles to investigate, but I would say the mainstream news media outlets were the most crucial factor, being used as effective tools of consent-manufacturing in many of the ways Chomsky describes.