Democrats have been pretty impressive the past few months. Organizing to retire Biden, coalescing around Harris, re(re)branding as a patriotic centrist party, relatively skillful messaging. Harris has been a consistent campaigner, Walz was an inspiring pick you can project governance hopes on. Everyone has their head down, and there's decent energy in the streets. 

Whatever counterfactuals we can imagine, the Democrats themselves have done about as well as we could have hoped for in picking a plan and executing it relatively well.