That would be convincing if they hadn't spent money buying ads for maga candidates during that same election cycle.
I agree, that was an awful strategy. Even if it helps in the short term, it boosts fascism in the long term. It did mostly gain us seats though... https://www.npr.org/2022/11/11/1135878576/the-democrats-strategy-of-boosting-far-right-candidates-seems-to-have-worked
Politics is a zero sum game, they saw the money better spent on winning. Your framing of it is dishonest. Again, I don't agree with doing that, but it's pretty easy to understand why they did it, it worked.