I'm all for a voter ID requirement, and like you find the Democrats decision to take the position that is better described as "polar opposite of the Republican position" than a reasonable one.

The Dems should insist on voter ID, and insist that getting a voter ID is a fundamental right. The government cannot, as it so often does in GOP run states, insist on ID then make it hard to get an ID. If having a fucking gun is a fundamental right to hold the government in check (despite said government possessing the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, but let's leave those questions of logic aside), the right to voter ID cannot possibly be any less strong, no matter that it wasn't mentioned as a right word for word in the original constitution.

The Democrats truest case against the GOP is to call their bullshit and insist on a national voter ID that the respective state government in question cannot abridge the right of anyone to get, by, say, having no place to get one in certain counties.

Same with abortion. The Dems seem incapable of seeing the good sense and the good politics of passing a narrow law nationally permitting abortion in the case of rape and incest. If the Republicans magically see sense and vote for it in the Senate, it's a small but meaningful win. On the other hand, the Republicans will almost certainly filibuster the bill, and the ads just write themselves.

The Dems seem so earnestly focussed on assuring us they'd never do anything like the Republicans that they've forgotten how to create wedge issues by calling the oppositions bluff.

As for states having a right to regulate their elections, they do have that right, to a certain extent. But the Constitution does also allow for Federal regulation in this area. The Federal government isn't totally dependent on whatever election law a state chooses to enshrine. There are federal and constitutional principles at stake that definitely can drive federal regulation that trumps what a state might want to do in violation of the Constitution.