I think what will happen is that Steemit and its community will increasingly splinter into different groups of interest and for users it will be normal to have different accounts to "diversify" their risk (at least that is what I am planning since bernies last visit on my account..).
In the long-run, I see a cold peace-like scenario. Bernie and his Stalinist friends can't do much more than burning through their voting power. They surely won't win and without @ned or the developers as a whole changing anything, they have no chance but to intimidate everyone by occasionally giving a user the torches and pitchforks treatment... which actually would be more in line with Mao: Punish one, discipline 100.
At one point, the SJW crew will be ignored and everyone will have a 2nd or 3rd account for both controversial content and self-upvotes if necessary. Nobody can do anything against that, except for the developers.
This would imply that bernie et al have to give up at one point, but since Steem Dollar is lifting off right now, the $$ loss for them would be too significant, which is why I believe they won't go anywhere soon. This again brings in @ned and the developers, who - in the name of the platforms existence and attraction to investors - will have to do something against this SWJ/antifa behavior.
Bottom line: You are 100% right by arguing from the economic/financial angle for Steemit, because that's the only level on which it is rational and dominant to change the platform conceptually (or even exclude users) if necessary.
"They surely won't win"
They appear to want only to destroy Steemit and anyone who is successful on it. At this, they can succeed by continuing to push their toxic attitudes across Steemit until user retention numbers are even worse than they already have been.