To be in the in crowd makes them feel like a big shot. This is pleasing to someone who has no ability to actually be a big shot.
Their MO is to stroke the rulers in order to receive a smile and maybe even a favor here and there.
Right, like star-struck teenagers on the red carpet
.... What (liberals) really want is liberal Sharia law, a secular theocracy. The minimum wage, gender equality, nationalized health care, and global warming—whatever their practical virtues—are not just expedient policy prescriptions. They are essential aspects of the liberal fatwa. Feminism, deconstruction, and gender theory are not just academic abstractions up for discussion among liberal academics: They are articles of their religious creed. Question them and you are not just wrong—you are a heretic.
...for them, politics is the means to secular salvation...political failure is not just a setback on the road to a more stable society—it is a blow to their very worldview. Opposition to their program is not just wrong-headed, but evil.