Hmm, I was talking about 2016, when in specific areas a lack of effective GOTV (partly or hugely fault of DNC) hurt the Democratic party. 2018 there was a major push from women for GOTV that seemed to greatly push the # of women in office. Now obviously it's not just GOTV that gets women to run for office - there were a lot of pissed off women, so there has to be a message that makes the voters think that these new candidates will be better than the old schmucks, which largely happened. 2020 was a mess due to Covid preventing a lot of personal meetups. But in 2022 some states like Georgia seemed to greatly benefit on the Dem side from strong GOTV efforts, as well as presumably messaging that brought in independents & disaffected Republicans. Still, the GOP took the House, and as Walker's candidacy shows - much like Trump's run et al - that the support has been highly built in, no matter how outrageous the actions, the idea of flipping to the other party is often seen as treason, but with Trump starting to fade, possibly there's more room for persuading those disgusted with their party (on either side?).
We had this discussion about Hispanics, but it turned out that Hispanics were only really recruitable on the right in Florida and non-border Texas - not so much in other states. Again, Hillary & the Dems seemed to do a fairly poor job in GOTV in Hispanic regions (except in loony GOP-Cuban Miami, kind of a lost cause), so I'm not sure where discredited. Part of why Biden & others did well might have been the Lincoln Project which said stuff that liberals couldn't get away with saying, but some of the evidence seemed to say these ads were better at motivating the Dems than actually switching Republicans & Independents. Of coure there were voters discouraged in 2016 who just sat the thing out - not willing to "hold their nose". Some of these were far left, but some were more centrist, but felt Hillary was too much scandal and baggage. And then there was the issue that her actual policy messages couldn't cut through all the email-email-email noise ($20 billion for W. Virginia job revamp?), whereas in 2020 Biden did well by largely staying quiet and letting Trump drive away more voters.
Anecdotally it seems Gen-Z may be heavily Dem/liberal or at least not willing to tolerate the Abbott-DeSantis bullshit, which may not be pivotal in 2024, but by 2028/30/32 could shift things - IF a number of other things happen, like effective governing, cutting through the Fox bubble, handling new bots & AI/ChatDPT & deep fake disinfo, and other shifts we haven't even thought about yet. Presumably the Russian-Ukraine war can have some fallout and shifts before 2024. While everyone's looking at DeSantis, I'm not completely convinced he'll be that strong Feb 2024 when voters start to actually pay attention - we saw a whole field of "promising" Republicans easily wiped out in Jan/Feb 2016 - including Cruz, Rubio, Jeb Bush, etc. Part of it was "messaging", part of it was what Steve Jobs did with "Think Different' - don't tell them what you're gong to sell them & how good it runs - tell them who you are, your values, how you represent their future. And there people often ignored the negatives or the contradictions - they bought the personality, the promise. Somewhat similar to Obama, who became a Rorschach test for voters, largely in a positive way - where 2 supporters could think he held 2 opposing views on an issue. Great if you can manage it.
Whether this is the new normal or not, we've got some disturbing shit coming up too - "Lizard people" is now an accepted part of the discourse, just like fabulations like the Dominion Voting machines, and whatever else. Hard to predict that effect.

"Heck, look at Liz Cheney, she's one of  those who voted for Dems in the last election. Do you think she's gonna tolerate 'The Squad' types any better than Trumpies?"
That's so weird - right now Cheney has to prove she can hold any power whatsoever - she lost her House seat as the GOP takes over. She can't even caucus with the Dems. Maybe Biden will give her an admin slot, but otherwise she's drifting for the moment - so yeah, The Squad has more power than her at the moment despite doing a good job with the Jan6 Committee.
The Jimmy Carter thing is what's happened several times - the Dems fix Republicans' problems with the economy, and then Republicans get in office and blow it up again. In this case, Carter and Volker(?) put the screws on the economy to tamp down inflation. (remember Ford's "Whip Inflation Now", ironically flipped over to "No Instant Miracles"?). So by the end of Reagan's honeymoon, Carter's adult-on-the-economy was taking effect so Reagan could do his cuts (not that lowering from 98% tax rate to reasonable wasn't needed, but Reagan got a lot of fame off Carter's sacrifices.
But let's talk the shift from strong Southern Dems (Connolly/Barbara Jordan, Carter, Clinton, Gore...) to what happened since Bush. Sister Souljah ain't the whole story. How Republicans handled the fullcourt press for the Iraq War, the don't-accept-defeat-or-responsibility after the 2008 crash, etc. Winning despite losing, that new culture war on a lot more fronts. Lined up with the rise of stronger social media (not just internet) and the Fox News/Sinclair behemoths and never-ending campaigns. The inclination to just say anything no matter how detached from truth and easily disproved grew and grew. It's very hard to appeal to "values" when the values are often rigged, subject to propaganda campaigns, etc. 
It's very funny to me that you think Im in awe of "GOTV" as solution - I'm more amazed that Biden lucked out despite doing a shitty job cutting through the propaganda tsunami to get elected - precisely because the pandemic rewarded being off the trail and staying quiet, while Trump made enough of an idiot of himself. After Abbott's shitty dropping off refugees to Kamala's door on Christmas Eve we're not through with stupid foolish moves from the right, but still, they have the advantage - AND I DON'T KNOW HOW TO EFFECTIVELY COMBAT IT. GOTV partially worked with a strong Southern belt, where getting Blacks to the polls could mean victory. Now except for Georgia it means "only" losing by 20 points. Elsewhere, yes, there's a tradeoff between hard Lincoln Project ads that tweak the politicians' tails, but can also piss off their supporters, whereas a version of "let them make fools of themselves" *might* work, but if they control the airwaves through Fox and CNN (infatuated with Trump in 2016, and now trying to tilt conservative), and talk radio - even Maggie Haberman/NYT plus WaPo have been invaluable allies to the GOP on killing bad news - it can be tough getting news of Republican failure to the masses. Good news like a number of Bidens' initiatives & successes travels slow, and gets eaten up like Hemingway's marlin before it gets back to port. So no, announcing great ideas that quickly get slathered in lies & disinfo isn't a guaranteed way to attract the "rubes", the open-minded Americans (if such actually exist, or just are triggered by specific issues which may be hard for Republicans to completely lock in)