any democrat running nationally in this environment was just fucked no matter what
Nah, if a Democrat ran on being significantly different from Biden and going after the greedy companies causing inflation (with that wording explicitly) they would have had a chance.
Of course there are next to no Democrats that would use that kind of rhetoric. Maybe Bernie but really he'd probably be too civility minded chickenshit to talk bad about his good friend Biden.
Post-exposure prophylaxis?