That's because Republicans are masters at marketing a message that connects with average folks. They are absolutely terrible for those folks, but as you pointed out, the US economy is so massive, it takes time for legislation passed today to actually affect people in hometown America. So while Republicans are great at pretending they are all blue collar folks, Democrats are absolutely inept at explaining their policies to regular people. All those regular people see a bunch of Democratic lawmakers wasting their resources on teeny, tiny fringe groups. So regular people who represent large voting blocs that can get politicians elected watch this on the news and wonder when are Demcrats going to pay attention to their problems.

At my last company, we had a TV in the break room that was tuned to the news. Mind you, it wasn't Fox News or any obvious garbage like that. I vividly remember seeing reports on the news on how all these Democratic politicians were spending all this time helping DACA people. They would promise them Healthcare and free education. I could hear my coworkers mumble to themselves. They just had to send in a fat check to their kid's college to pay for classes while these DACA people were being promised free education. Regardless of of these coworkers supported the DACA folks or not, it just doesn't look good to average voters when they are scraping together a tuition payment and the elected officials you helped get into office are telling these people who aren't even citizens. It's very tone-deaf when the masses have the same or similar problems and yet onky these fringe groups get visible attention from Democrats. And this is but one example of many similar instances which really help solidify the image thag Dems are out of touch, even if that isn't true. In politics, image is more important than just about anything else.