Ah, yes, the fallacy where the Republicans are the de facto winners and the election is only up to what the Democrats do.
I mean, yeah, they ran a mediocre campaign, but there is a difference between “critiquing our leaders” and literally campaigning against them, and leftist in general have a hard, hard, HARD time with that one. Critique is for when you’re in power. You analize, you apply your newfound political power to create pressure, you postmortem what went wrong. Campaigns are for winning.
Okay, let’s break it down.
How about first half of the Trump presidency, when the Democrats needed to regroup, take stock of just how badly they screwed up and plan how to never do that again? I’d say that was a good time.
How about the first half of the Biden presidency, when the Democrats could actually pass legislation and position themselves to brand the nature of their term? That was a good time. Happy to engage then.
I know it sucks to not have an alternative. I get it. But going after the only side that is even vaguely functional because you think you’re holding “your guys” to account is not one of the set of options you have at the moment. Spend those good times to debate lobbying for deep, profound reform that unlocks the political system for more varied options, as opposed to making every election an existential choice between actual, explicit fascism and literally anything else.
Until you do that, these are your choices. Not liking the choices doesn’t change that fact.