Spineless, unprincipled, constantly making excuses about why they're not doing anything, unwilling to do literally fucking ANYTHING to help the people they say they represent.
What are the underlying material conditions driving this?
Here in BC, Canada, the "social democratic" NDP government recently got a majority government, which means they can do literally anything they want. Pass any legislation they want. Pass any laws, any taxes, literally whatever the fuck they want.
And what have they done? FUCK ALL. Nothing. Not a single piece of legislation that I can think of. They're taking as long as they possibly can to implement $15 minimum wage, no paid sick days, no card check legislation, fucking NOTHING. Instead of using the pandemic as the obvious reason to pass this legislation they are hiding behind it as their excuse to avoid doing literally anything useful.
This seems to be the case all over the Western world.
WHY?
A lot that's wrong with Social-Democratic Parties is found in this Bernstein quote
From a point of view where the only thing that matters is for your party to win elections, it becomes easy to justify abandoning any platform which makes it hard to do so (ie: policies those that are in direct opposition to the Bourgeois) and clearly the BCNDP cares more for keeping their majority then with doing anything with it.
Bill Clinton and one of his advisors had a conversation about this when they were down in polls before the reelection, and decided to break with the succdem-ish politics.
"What's the point of getting reelected if you have no mandate to do anything when you're reelected?"
Bill: "What's the point of having a mandate if you can't get reelected? Isn't the ultimate goal getting reelected?"
https://youtu.be/VouaAz5mQAs?t=2442