Yes, democrats expect that leaders of the party will embrace and promote democratic platforms.
Aka, reinforce their 'inclusive' 'diverse' rainbow-colored drones, say a bunch of feelgood baloney and empty platitudes, while doing absolutely nothing to improve people's material conditions.
I don't want to sit here and defend her, I think Gabbard is super sus for a lot of reasons. But not because she wasn't a Good Democrat.
As long as they all leave office greatly enriched financially, they're all sus. That's about as far as I will 'defend' her, though I will say to the point about her being a political opportunist: Even Nixon went to China.
For the record, I don't know much about about her, other than when she attacked Kamala's track record in that debate, and some of the talking points from/about her over the last four years, so I'm not in the bag for her per se. To me, she's out of step with what it means to be a 'politician' in this current climate, though I don't condemn her for that; it just makes getting in/staying in office tricky, as history has borne out.
I went back to page 1 of this thread and started reading it again. I tried to read the New Yorker article
@fatguyinalittlecoat posted, though my chronic ADHD made it difficult to separate the fluff and opinion building points from actual facts about her politics. From what I could glean, if anything, she's the same political enigma she was when she started, with one foot supporting liberal issues and one supporting conservative ones.
It was definitely political suicide to not fall in lock-step with the DNC. To me, though, it was refreshing to see a politician (former at this point, I guess) follow that type of path, and while I would probably take issue with some of her policies/stances, her willingness to actually volunteer to put her life at risk in service to this country, along with her fairly consistent adherence to her own views (as was laid out in the article, anyway) would make me trust that her desire to be a servant of this country (as opposed to seeing it as a means to power and wealth) is honest, something both parties need more of.
I think it was inevitable that she had to leave the DNC; her goals didn't 100% mesh with theirs and these days if you're not with your party (including RNC, just to be clear) and all it stands for, you're against it.
I generally like Gabbard, but I think she sits in a bit of a weird political position that will hurt her chances in the Democratic primary. She's very left/progressive on some issues, while also being a pretty big warhawk due to her own personal beliefs and history. I think that will hurt her if there are other, more "pure" progressive candidates running against her in a primary. That said, I could see that mix being more appealing in a general election, as she might be able to bring over some people that would balk at a more traditional progressive candidate. As a poor analogy, I see her a bit more like a Teddy progressive than an FDR progressive.
Too bad for her that she wasn't born into Roosevelt-type money.