Liberals, please acknowledge that if there is a possibility every election that fascism will win, fascism will eventually win unless you take political action outside of electoralism
This is why it's important to build strong democratic institutions to resist fascism, populism, and the like. They won't last forever, but they can take a few election cycles of abuse. Part of the problem with many countries that have truly fallen to fascism or fascist-like movements is that they started out with weak or non-existent institutions. Contrast that with the US, where even the election of Donald Trump of the "Lock Her Up" slogan (very fascist) got basically nowhere with both prosecuting Hillary Clinton and overturning the 2020 election.
How so? Fascism is rarely a matter of a single election. It's usually a slide. Providing a bulwark against that slide means you have several election cycles to snuff out fascism and return to liberal democracy.
Rereading the thread, I think we're in agreement. I was more adding onto your point, that building strong institutions and norms is important along with political activism. Institutions and norms slow the rot from the inside, political action slow it from the outside.