What are your ideas for enacting ranked choice voting that don't involve leveraging the Democrats to make it happen?
It could maybe happen in individual states that allow citizen introduced ballot measures. That would be great. The scope and efficacy of that idea is pretty stunted though. You'd have to hope the measure passes in the first place, and counting on it to act as a catalyst for every other state to adopt the same is unrealistic. I'd expect a much longer time horizon on that approach than engaging with Democrats as far as making it the standard for the country at large.
That's the other alternative I can think of to get the foot in the door, but I'm very open to hearing anything else that's feasible.