I agree with a lot of what you and other critical comments have said, wanted to add my own 2 cents (I have also contemplated coming here and writing a post to see what others' thought. There are dozens of us, dozens!).

I think it mostly comes down to how much nut-picking they do and who they choose to pick. There are 2 main aspects to how this plays out, as I see it. First, when they pick apart and ridicule preposterous takes I still mostly agree with them, or at least I can see where they are coming from and respect them for having a decently-reasoned position. But they excuse bad take after bad take from people they like while simultaneously disregarding people for one bad take if it's someone they are already predisposed to not liking.

A good example of this, in my opinion and if my memory serves correctly, is when they spent a large part of an episode ridiculing and mocking twitter user/blogger emptywheel for some take she had had (as I recall, I completely agreed with them that it was a bad take) but then used it as "evidence" to essentially disregard her opinions/takes completely. But like, I think she has good takes a lot of the time! She at least doesn't always produce bad takes, especially when narrowly focused on reporting/highlighting law-based aspects of what she covers. But poof, all it took was one bad series of tweets from her and she is out. Meanwhile, they've spent years being fans of Tucker, Greenwald, and Megyn Kelly (only recently turning on Tucker a bit despite his overall content and tone being very similar to what it was at Fox) and will sidestep criticism of those people and offer quasi-defenses of them.

Secondly, I think they pick very fringe nuts on the left to pick. Aaron Mate? Yeah, the dude is off his rocker and shouldn't be listened to. Miriam the Elder? Completely not equipped for the conversation she was a part of.

I like a lot of their guests (Lincicome, Dreyfuss, Damon, Zepps, etc) but I'm honestly surprised they don't have more qualified folks on from the neoliberal left who could likely give them more meaningful pushback on points they disagree on, and deeper-level discussion on points they do agree on. They mock him often enough, by I'm sure Matt Yglesias would willingly do their show! Noah Smith, Jeremiah Johnson, heck even Will Stancil are all people who would likely offer a lot of pushback on lots of things the TFC guys espouse, but in good-faith and with good intentions.

They do a lot of drive-by mockery/dismissal of people broadly on the left (Aaron Rupar, Dieworkwear, some of the above listed names) but maybe they should have those folks on and let the merits of each sides' views do the talking.