Fair points but I don't personally put much weight in the perception of what Republicans might say about a coronation for a couple reasons:

• All of us on the Democratic side just want Trump to lose.
• Anyone who voted for Joe Biden will vote for anyone under the Democratic ticket.
• Especially when Joe Biden, himself, endorses that candidate. It's little different than letting Joe pick his own Vice President. It's kind of like a transitive extension of one's vote.

and it’s hard to know which bad option is the worst of the options.

And this is the thing that I'm 100% convinced of by this point, personally. I see not just little hope, but no hope for Biden winning at this stage. As I tried my best to convey, Biden is performing significantly worse compared to 2020 and even Hillary's failed run. There's kind of a diminishing-returns argument to be made at this point that the vast electorate knows both Trump and Biden through & through. There's nothing new they're going to realize that they don't already know. So to move poll numbers now is next to impossible; and with that, the polls are going in the wrong direction for Biden, and the full effect of the debate hasn't even set in.

So what does one do? Well between riding out the inevitable crash, I think we take the chance with another way. But we won't do that by the looks of it. And I will bet large sums of money that Biden loses, unfortunately.