The argument about "how far left" the Dem Party has moved conflates two separate questions. One is where the party is ideologically-- that is, what it would do if given the power to act freely. The other is about the party's political posture, ie, how hard it is willing to fight.
If you simply look at the policies that draw majority support among Democratic elected officials, there's no question that the party has moved left in the last several decades. Universal pre-K, CTC, massive climate industrial policy, etc. -- the BBB Act is incredibly ambitious.
It's the other question that draws most online heat: whether GOP opposition is a sharp limit on Dem ambition ... or whether Dems are in some sense complicit, giving up too easily, rolling over, not seriously committed to (&/or lying about) their stated policy goals.
This comes up most clearly in health care. During the Obama years, lots of folks argued: "single payer would be best, but it's a political nonstarter; something like Obamacare is the max possible." Others argued: "that's a lie; you prefer Obamacare because of $$$/corruption/etc."
Was something more/better than Obamacare possible? That depends on what you make of the counterfactual reality where Obama & Dem leaders pushed something else. You can argue it would have failed, leaving Dems w/ nothing. You can argue it could have passed. The thing is ...
... there is no way to settle an argument over a counterfactual. (This is why most political arguments never resolve.) You can construct scenarios all day long; there's no way to measure or rank them on plausibility. The truth is, no one knows. You can choose your own adventure.
So for any given thing the Dems do -- take your pick -- you can argue it's great, because it's better than nothing/what the GOP would do, or you can argue it's a sellout, because it's worse than something else they could have done in counterfactual world.
Those arguments feel like a Rorschach test to me -- people (including me, I'm sure) just find their priors in it. If you're prone to thinking Dems are sellouts, you'll see everything they do through that lens. Vice versa for Dem loyalists. It's identity vs. identity.
For my own part, I've spent decades now yelling at Dems to fight harder, to take conservative radicalization more seriously & take it on more directly. But I'm also cognizant of the political science that says -- contra popular myth -- that politicians generally try to do ...
... what they say they're going to do. Their public statements are generally a pretty good guide to their beliefs & intentions. I take Dems at their word that they have moved left on both social & economic policy. They want to do all kinds of great things.
It's just, the structural constraints of US politics -- *particularly on progressive reformers* -- are very real. GOP nihilism really is difficult to work around. No one has leverage over Manchin. SCOTUS is fucked beyond repair. So's the Senate. So's the information environment.
So Dems have moved left, but their structural disadvantages have only grown & they've completely lost control of the infosphere, which is ever more poisoned against them, so their leftward ideological movement is unlikely to produce much policy fruit. </fin>
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