I'm not suggesting it could trivially become an OSI-approved license. Rather, I think it's much closer in spirit than something like the Timescale or "Commons Clause" or similar licenses, that blatantly discriminate against fields of endeavor (OSD 6) by design. The SSPL, by contrast, is a copyleft license that has a much stronger copyleft than the AGPL. It may potentially be overstepping the intent of what the OSD means to allow, but it doesn't on its face violate the spirit of any of those clauses, not any more so than the AGPL does. I think it'd be possible to modify the SSPL into a version that could meet that agreement while maintaining the intent of the license.
I personally feel like the spirit of OSD9 is primarily about not affecting unrelated programs. I think it'd be reasonable to affect related programs. I think the current version of SSPL oversteps wildly in that regard, but I feel like it could be pared back to something that would be consistent with what I'd consider to be the spirit of OSD9 (and the rest of the OSD), while still doing what it seems like the SSPL is trying to do.
In doing so, I'd focus on "such that a user could run an instance of the service using the Service Source Code you make available", and drop all the specific service examples in favor of something like "any software you have made the Program depend on, such that the Program lacks some functionality compared to your service if that software is not present (even if you have made the Program support running without that functionality)". That would be broader than the comparable boundary of the AGPL, but much narrower than the current SSPL, insofar as it would only cover things the Program has been modified to depend on, rather than surrounding hosting infrastructure.
In any case, I don't think it very likely that MongoDB would be willing to make such changes, but if they did, I think it'd be possible to arrive at a license that would pass the OSD.
