I don't think you need anything that conspiratorial, it's not that centrist Democrats really don't want to get anything done, it's just that they really are basically okay with the current neoliberal consensus.
Well, one is the claim that Democrats don't get anything done because they have a secret commitment to keep things the way they are so that voters have a reason to come back to the polls for them, and I'm saying maybe the reason is simply that Democrats are mostly fine with the way things are. Maybe your point is that this is a distinction without a difference, which I guess I'd mostly have to agree with.
The difference is that it goes beyond being okay with a policy consensus. The current presidency is an exercise is dismantling the checks and balances in the US government and an experiment in pushing the limits of propaganda and keeping the public complacent in the face of crimes committed against them by their government.
For example, they had to have known that McConnell would kill the Trump impeachment. But they went ahead with it anyway. The only explanation I can see for this is that they wanted to somehow signal their opposition to Trump with their core voter base, while wasting and effectively discrediting the usefulness of a last-resort tool for asserting their authority.
And what is Biden campaigning on? What is his campaign even doing [0]? Where are the attack ads branding Trump as an anti-American grifter? This feels like 2016 all over again, except with the added danger that we already know how dangerous Trump is, and if he wins again he'll have nothing to lose -- and his handlers in the halls of power will take full advantage of it. They know they are ruining America and they simply don't care, they'll just run to the bunker when shit gets bad for normal people [1].
