It is being liberal cowards who toe the party line while being excluded from the party strategy table. Their role is to sheepdog and that means they eat shit when they inevitably support a reactionary candidate or policy or party line that is likely to get walked back. The alternative would be that they act as real critics or gadflies, but they are comfortably avoiding being so lest they get the Bernie Bro treatment, which is to say, party pushback (as weak as it is!).

They are more right wing than they describe themselves to be, yes, but they do not even allow themselves many opportunities to appropriate the left and create some kind of socdem "resistance" because of this calculus. AOC would love to be the pro-Palestine darling if it didn't mean a direct confrontation with the party machine and donors.