It's a silly thing to focus on to a lot of people though, because the vast majority of people who the Democrats were supposed to be talking to weren't ever considering voting for Trump. Of course I say supposed to because in actuality you're right they were trying to appeal to Trump voters, and they failed again spectacularly as they usually do when they try to appeal to Republicans. However for the rest of us it's a moot point. They don't want to be told it's good compared to trump, because that was never an option. So saying their plan was better than Trump is like saying shooting yourself in the foot is better than shooting yourself in the head. That's not going to motivate people who would just prefer not to be shot at all.
If you don't think it should be a barometer then I suggest you stop using it as one. As for the election apparently your agreement with the previous post isn't quite as strong as you suggested, because it wasn't really an election between Trump and Harris for a clearly significant portion of the voters. It was between Harris and staying home. Staying home came out on top.
I agree with you and you're arguing with your imagined version of me based on a joke. This is completely pointless.
The fact is, either Trump or Harris was going to win. Making a comparison is fine. I didn't say the dems should only aspire to be better than Trump, I didn't say turnout was not a crucial factor, I didn't say any of this and if you look through my comments from before the election you'll see me saying basically exactly what you are many times.
Like I said, anyone who cares about that was going to vote Harris either way. The people who didn't show up are the people who didn't care about that comparison, or at least didn't care enough to go vote. Harris failed to appeal to these people in part because independently of Trump she didn't have coherent policy leading up to the election.
Honestly it wasn't that deep. Just an off the cuff joke about MTG saying they stole the house. You're right overall. I don't think it was a coherence issue but maybe