I don't think there's anything surprising about this. As the OP notes and the 2nd post reinforces, the consumers are young and they skew liberal. For many brands, aligning themselves with a liberal political position reinforces their relationship with their consumer.
I don't think it's entirely cynical, I think that many of these brands lean liberal in their C-suites or their boards.
2 interesting points to me. First is the directionality of the whole thing (no, I don't know if directionality is a word). These lifestyle brands lean liberal but they are influencers. So do they result in influencing the general public the same way?
Second, I've just started paying attention to "impact investing". I've known about people and funds who want a social or environmental benefit from their investments for a while, I didn't know it was a growing investment space at it's current rate. Seeing how much money is going into that space, some of the criticisms about social liberals and being out of touch and a variety of other things seem woefully out of date.