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I was also an adult in 2004, and mr_robot is correct, "Vote or Die" was just an edgy get-out-the-vote campaign to make voting cool, not a "VOTE OR WE LITERALLY ARE GOING TO DIE" call to arms against Bush. You are free to comment on things you weren't alive or and adult for, but you have to be correct. You are just wrong here. Let it go.
The message is the same. Vote or you'll be subjected to an increasingly authoritarian government bent on making the country worse. Regardless of how edgy you think the campaign was, we're saying the same shit over and over. You just feel more strongly about it because you understand the context this time.
That wasn't the message, it's not the same. You aren't listening or thinking critically about what you're saying, or reading carefully what we're trying to tell you.
The "vote or die" was "edgy" in that 90s way the same way the "DARE" anti-drug campaign was "hip and cool" - a completely mainstream, sanitized "cool" patina applied to the ultimately bland non-partisan message, "hey young adults, vote!" There was no message that if you don't vote you'll be subject to an "increasingly authoritarian government."
This is why mr_robot immediately went after your age - you didn't live it, you didn't know what happened, you're just confidently making a bunch of assumptions that you wouldn't be making if you had been there. So just let it die.
Here's a Slate article showing the usage of the phrase "most important election in our lifetime" going back 200 years.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/11/most-important-election-of-our-lifetimes-history.html
The messaging is the same, regardless of what campaign, what year, how edgy, how pandering. It's. The. Same. Vote or Die, MAGA, Hope, it's all bullshit campaign strategies trying to get people to think of an election as more important than any other so we get out and vote. The DNC has been running the same strategies every 4 years for decades now, just wrapped up in different packaging.