As a fellow Australian, I don’t understand why you’re surprised.
“Hold your nose and vote for the lesser evil” may be pragmatic, but it doesn’t get people emotionally engaged. It doesn’t get you infectious enthusiasm and passion. It gets you reluctant, dejected compliance, and that simply does not catch fire.
On the other side you have nothing but emotional engagement; god knows it’s not a rational or pragmatic choice there. Trump does nothing but pander to hatred and cruelty and fear and the power fantasies of gullible idiots, and it fucking works. Cheap shallow emotional satisfaction, no matter how stupid an idea it is. You know, like junk food and binge drinking and cigarettes and pokies; things that people know full well are ruining their lives, but they continue to seek them out regardless.
If the dems ever want to win, they will have to make the progressives fall in love with them, and you don’t get that by backing genocide unconditionally, you just don’t.
They didn’t get the oh-god-yes, just a not-no, and that does not equal consent.
If you spend the whole time sucking up to fascists, people are just going to cut out the middleman and elect one to run the place.