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?
Not about the NDP specifically, but there's this essay about Labour in the UK. I'd say the same applies to pretty much all socdem parties right now.
tldr - the socdem parties in the past decade have tried to create a 'big tent' of sorts comprised of both, college educated young 'radicals' and the older, more numerous and poorer factory workers. But there isn't any genuine solidarity between these two groups because, unlike in the past, there isn't any socialist underpinnings to their ideology. Most of the young 'radicals' only want to become a part of the petite bourgeoisie and would gladly jump ship to the liberals as soon as they start making some money. And most of the poorer working class have been filled with hatred for 'liberals', socialists, minorities, muslims, lgbtq+ etc by decades of conservative brainwashing. So the socdem parties can't offer any genuine economic change nor genuine social change - only mild reforms and the appearance of change which just delays the inevitable (if that).