the giveaway is the sheer lack of a logical chain of actions which leads to possible solution by any objective measure.

How is that a "giveaway"? Presidents get blamed for what happens on their watch - whether it was their fault or not. I used the "fire the coach because you can't fire the players" analogy upthread. If the team is losing, the coach will get the blame - regardless of whether the team's losses stem from anything the coach did or could have done.

Voters hate the inflation they've experienced, so the Democrats get the blame for it. They hate high interest rates if they're buying a house or a car (and even more if they can't buy a house or car because of high rates), so the Democrats get the blame for it. The Democrats get extra political pain for these things because they bungled the political response to high inflation rates back in the day, telling voters that it was "transitory" and moving ahead with their fiscal agenda unchanged, rather than doing anything to acknowledge that voters were really upset by inflation and wanted that to be reflected in government priorities.

Add in voter displeasure over immigration - and a similar mismatch between where voters are and where Democratic messaging was - and it's easy to see why it's a close election.