Not how it works long term. You make your party very different than the winner, give an actual choice to be made. When things go to shit under the incumbents, provided your party members can give compelling reasons their ideas and policy will succeed. Or they're just sick of the incumbent and want a change. Within a year there's gonna be a complete blow out of the Liberal party in Canada and replacement by a quite different conservative party. There was a time the Liberal and PC parties leaders and policies were nearly identical, watching those debates was surreal, them angrily saying the same thing back n forth at each other in different words. The PC party no longer exists, has been replaced by an actual conservative party that does quite well, already has had a ten year prime minister despite only being a party since 1990.

This sort of thing happens in other countries. The Conservative party in Canada (federally) is not the same party as the previous Conservative party. After Brian Mulroney, the party got blown out so bad it lost official party status, theyd been around since 1850. The current conservative party is the renamed Reform party, founded 1988 or so. Went from a new party to governance in roughly 14 years. Ever now and then, the media still tries to call them "Tories" but they're not, that party died, federally. Still exists in some provinces on a "state" level, Doug Ford is one, premier of Ontario, but works fairly closely with Federal Liberals more than Federal Conservatives.

Of the Democrats. What I'm saying that if just once in the last thirty years, there had been one definitive blow out of that party, all these silly debates of "lesser evil" and "you have to vote" would be moot, as they'd not be running literal garbage anymore.