while Democrats must be constantly persuaded to vote for candidates who they perceive as being less than perfect

I want to argue with you, but can't.

Seems like they've been campaigning pretty hard on abortion access. Not sure what else a party that covers moderate right and center with a few moderate lefts could all get excited about. Federal legalization of Marijuana might be popular enough.

I'd like to see more progressive campaigns but unfortunately it seems like the party needs everyone who isn't far right to have a chance of beating the christo-fascists. It seems so much harder to motivate voter turnout for Democrats. You can't just feed them anger, hate and fear, you have to convince them you're actually going to make things better.

I didn't want Biden but isn't that who the party voted for in the primary? I guess after Trump, a boring, return to normal sounded good to people and I haven't heard of anyone else running for the Democratic nomination that's even worth consideration. We had the anti-vaccine loon with zero experience, the congressman I'd never heard of who can't name anything he would do differently than Biden and was so incompetent he missed the filing deadline to be on the ballot in some states and the lady who also has no experience but seems like she believes in healing crystals. The whole party is a complicated mess but I still find it almost incomprehensible that there is a still a serious possibility of Trump being elected again.

Democrat PACs have also funded ads on behalf of the most insane Republican candidates with the hope that they'd be easier to beat if they get the nomination. Something like this happened with Hillary and Trump, they wanted him to get the nomination, what a laughingstock the Republicans would be in that case. The insane candidates get increased legitimacy this way, but Democrats want to be able to point to the opponent and call them an extremist, it's a legitimate strategy that has worked for them, but they don't or can't address the broader effect this is having over time.

The Democrats also tell this story that doesn't land with many voters now, like everything is actually okay and it's the Republicans who are to blame, or it's because people aren't comfortable enough to be authentically themselves or some bs. The general economic arrangements are actually fine, as long as people of different identities are distributed within them equally.

There's also for the first time in America's history an ideological consensus within each party, that's basically come about during the last 30 years. All the "checks and balances" the founders envisioned break in this scenario. A single faction/party can control all branches of government and do whatever they want. When Biden started in politics there were segregationist Democrats for instance, there wasn't this broad party identity that aligned behind a single shared view.

Then a lot of this condenses down in to the stupidest do-nothing argument that, "if you don't vote for Biden you're helping the fascists." It doesn't appreciate how voting is the bare minimum of political engagement and barely matters unless you're in a very specific location. So people spend all this time getting upset around the vote, and any complaints about Biden or Democrats is equated to helping the fascists. Don't talk about these problems because it will make Trump look good! Downward spiral thinking all the way.