I appreciate your comment. A common theme I've seen through my politically conscious life (15 years maybe?) is that Democrats think Republicans are stupid, where most Republicans just think Democrats are misguided.

Where what you said comes into that is that Democrats think they can win just by nature of Republicans being incompetent. Republicans are out there, like you said, doing the dirty work to win elections and mind/vote-share, because while they disagree with Democrats, they know they can't just rest on their smug sense of superiority.