False equivalence or just false.
By many measures the Democratic Party is still an ordinary political party that tries to enact particular policies to address particular problems based on facts and a cost-benefit analysis. The ACA is one example. The IRA is another. There are many. While in power they diligently seek to pass legislation addressing priorities they ran for office on. You may disagree with these priorities, but the majorities who elected them do agree with them. And in fact, typically a majority of Americans, including many who vote against Democrats, also agree with these priorities.
The Republicans also run on platforms but are much less successful at converting their positions into legislation, largely because their coalition contains a fractious contingent that is motivated by attention more than policy goals, but also because in the event they get cold feet: they realize in the event that repealing the enormously popular policy they ran against would have enormous blowback for them. Repealing Roe is one example. The repeated attempts to repeal the ACA is another.
What you're reacting to, I think, is the failure to pass policy due to checks and balances -- you need both houses of the legislature, the executive, and, increasingly, agreement of the courts. But even if the policy passed, nearly 50% of the populace would think they had been failed by its passage.
I hope you and I don't have to learn how functional the government was before the Republicans broke it. The avian flu is a great test case. International trade is another. Here's hoping the mass layoffs Trump intended to set into motion and the collapse of state and local governments due to sudden budget shocks doesn't set off another Great Depression. That would be another interesting test case. What happens when ram the ship of state into a granite cliff?