I was gonna title this "And here I sit so patiently waiting to find out what price you have to pay to get out of going through all these things twice" and then write "Stuck inside of America with the fascism blues again" here, but I'm not sure if that comes off like gloating and that's honestly the last thing I want to do this morning.
He is very popular among republicans, nationally he never broke 45% favorability, and is usually <40%.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump/
It's dumb because it's trying to win a popularity contest instead of running on how you'll immediately improve people's conditions.
Which means that by making "we're not him" the primary campaign message, you're immediately alienating everyone who may like him, even if they were thinking about voting against him. Georgia is a pretty good example of what that campaign message resulted in. There are enough Republicans to win elections and enough undecided to swing elections. Alienating 45% of the constituency is a ridiculous strategy.
People who like Trump vote Trump, and are going to vote republican anyway.
So adopting republican policies didn't get them the wins, are you suggesting the democrats would have won if they adopted republican policy AND pretended to respect Trump?
I think their point is that the campaign should've focused on reasons to vote for them, not just against Trump. Then maybe swing voters could've been swayed.