The Dems SHOULD have opened the primary long before they had to put Grandpa in the home. I think even sundowning Biden would have done better than Hairy Kamel. But I think, if we take Butler out of the equation, someone actually charismatic who legitimately won the Democratic primary - not just a woman put in because the DNC exec committee believed tumblr was like reality, but someone who actually won over the base on their own merit - would have been able to beat Punished Trump in the campaign. I don't want to say "easily" but just being likable and putting in effort to attract a base would have given them a comfortable win, IMHO.
Trump '24 had already shown he couldn't drain the swamp, just slow it filling up. And even if we assume trump is right and the 2020 election was stolen by Crooked Biden, he was behaving like a cringey loser by complaining about it for 4 years. "Wah they robbed me" is cuck behavior, the sort of thing the 2015/6 Centipede would have mocked ferociously.