That doesn't sound anywhere close to intelligent.

It's actually very intelligent. Probably moreso than the reverse for most people.

If you have views about policy that mostly line up with the Democrats, or if you're a member of the coalition that the Democrats tend to favor, or you have some general reason for wanting the Democrats to be the party that exercises power instead of the Republicans...you're almost always better off voting for a Democrat than any other candidate. Especially for President. And the converse is true for the Republicans.

If you are generally aligned with one of the two parties, it is so much worse for your preferred outcomes for the opposite party to gain control of a branch (or all) of government that the individual positions, characteristics, or policy attributes of any candidate are almost never going to outweigh that. It's so much more significant that the opposite party not get control of the agenda that it's going to outweigh almost anything else.