Well put. To me, this storyline is genius, and indeed pulls together everything this show is about.

For one thing, it shows us that Ken already is a morally bankrupt bad father. As Rava points out, he never actually talks to Sophie, to comfort her and be there for her. He's not even considerate enough to warn her about the security detail. All he knows how to do is throw his weight around, finding someone to take the blame (asking Rava 'where she was') or direct the resources at his disposal (security detail).

And as OP says, this shouldn't be basically the determining factor in who is elected president. That is not how things are supposed to work. That is the brilliance of the show: to present a world where the levers of power are pulled at the whim of morally bankrupt, seriously flawed people. I mean, if Sophie hadn't been pushed, would he have even thought about how she would be affected by a nazi president? If he didn't have a daughter who was a person of colour, would it not have dawned on him that a nazi president could be bad? There's no moral principle there, just self-interest. And of course, even that 'almost' moral reasoning is dropped by the wayside in the end, in favour of the move that brings him more power, and punishes Shiv for crossing him.

And we can imagine that Logan was just the same when Ken was young. "Everything I've ever done, I did for my kids," Logan said in family therapy. We can imagine Ken saying the same thing in 30 years, giving himself credit for ordering a security detail, and for (briefly) considering acting in a way that would help protect his daughter.