The Goemans-Williamson algorithm in the $SOS$ framework If there is a variable $x_i$ for every vertex $i$ of a $d$-regular graph $G$ then assigning $x_i = \pm 1$ gives a cut, say $(S,\bar{S})$, of the graph. We can then see that, $\langle x,L x\rangle$, where $L = I - A/d$, equals $4E(S,\bar{S})/d$. So trying to maximize $\langle x,Lx \rangle$ over $x \in \{1,-1\}^{|V|}$ maximizes the number of edges crossing across the cut, $(S,\bar{S})$.

With this set-up the Goemans–Williamson algorithm is stated in the sum-of-squares (SOS) literature as the claim that there exists a polynomial-time algorithm such that one can output a vector $z \in \{ \pm 1 \}^{\vert V \vert }$ such that $\langle z,Lz \rangle \geq 2n(1-f_{GW}(\epsilon))$ where $f_{GW}(\epsilon) \leq 10\sqrt{\epsilon}$ provided one is given a degree-2 pseudo-distribution such that $\tilde {\mathbb{E}} [x_i ^2] =1, \tilde {\mathbb{E}} [\langle x, Lx \rangle ] \geq 2n(1-\epsilon)$ 

So naturally the question arises as to from where does one get such a degree-2 pseudo-distribution? The implicit claim seems to be that there exists a "degree-2 SOS algorithm" which when run on these constraints $\{ x_i^2 =1, \langle x, Lx\rangle = 2n(1-\epsilon)\}$ will generate this "degree-2 pseudo-distribution". This apparently seems to be set up to be a semidefinite programming (SDP) question and hence one basically has to solve a SDP to get this pseudo-distribution!


So what is the advantage of the SOS point of view here if one has to anyway run a SDP to get this degree-2 pseudo distribution? 
Also can someone point out an explicit reference about what exactly is this "degree-2 SOS algorithm" which will run on these constraints to give me the "degree-2 pseudo-distribution"?
Looking at the Goemans–Williamson algorithm in the SOS framework yields no technical advantages: it is exactly the same algorithm and the same ideas are used in the analysis.
The only advantages in doing so are:


Arguably the algorithm seems less "magical" in that viewpoint, though of course that's a matter of taste.
It's a good basic case to get intuition for the SOS framework, and so understanding this algorithm will help in understanding more complicated uses of it.


As Sasho Nikolov points out, a degree 2 pseudo-distribution is simply a positive semidefinite (PSD) matrix, and so finding such a matrix satisfying any particular linear constraints can be done via semidefinite programming. In particular, for any pseudo-distribution $\{ u_i \}_i$ of degree at least 2, the matrix $X_{i,j} = \tilde{\mathbb{E}} u_i u_j$ is PSD. 

Given an $n\times n$ PSD matrix $X$, one can find a Gaussian distribution $y\in\mathbb{R}^n$ such that $\mathbb{E} y_iy_j = X_{i,j}$ for all $i,j$ and hence the distribution $\{ y_i \}_i$ matches the second moments of the pseudo-distribution represented by $X$. (One can obtain $y$ by sampling a standard Gaussian vector $z$ and letting $y=X^{1/2}z$.)

The rounding algorithm is to obtain a distribution $w$ over $\{\pm 1\}^n$ by letting $w_i = \textrm{sign}(y_i)$. This is exactly equivalent to the standard description of "hyperplane rounding" whereas one takes vectors $v_1,\ldots,v_n$ such that $X_{i,j} = \langle v_i,v_j \rangle$ and lets $w_i = \textrm{sign}(\langle v_i , z\rangle)$ where $z$ is a random Gaussian vector. 

Now we want to compare the value of the pseudo-distribution, which (up to scaling) is the same as the sum of $-X_{i,j}$ over all edges $(i,j)$, with the expected value of our rounded solution $w$, which will be the sum of $- w_iw_j$. So now we want to calculate the probability that the edge will be cut by $w$ as a function of $X_{i,j}$. It all boils down to figuring out the following calculation: if $w_i$ and $w_j$ are two Gaussian random variables with $\mathbb{E} w_i^2 = \mathbb{E} w_j^2 = 1$ and  $\mathbb{E} w_i w_j = \rho$, what would be the probability that their signs agree? I personally think that the most interesting regime for Max-Cut is when the objective value is close to $1$. One nice thing in that regime is that you can get some qualitative insight by showing that if $\rho = -1 +\epsilon$ then their signs agree with probability at most $O(\sqrt{\epsilon})$. However, if you are interested in figuring out the approximation ratio (or more generally figure out the precise trigonometric function behind this $O(\cdot)$ term) then Goemans–Williamson's analysis exactly resolves this calculation.