And the reason why it was allowed to get this far was exactly that attitude of "as long as they're not as bad as the other team, they have my vote".
Every time the Republicans moved right, the Dems moved with them, always chasing those (increasingly rare to the point of almost being extinct) "undecided" voters who are considering voting Republican but wouldn't rather die than vote Dem.
As the Overton window has moved with the major parties, we now have literal fascists and anarcho-capitalists being described as if they were just your standard legitimate conservatives and a DEM president that governs to the right of Reagan on almost everything and to the right of everyone since Truman (or maybe even Hoover) on Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, except for the Mango Mussolini himself.
All of that could have been avoided if people had held the people supposed to represent their best interests accountable beyond "I'll vote for you as long as you're even a tiny bit less bad than the alternative".