Here’s how I put it elsewhere in this thread:

You have two choices, one is to poison a towns water supply without telling them.

The other choice is poisoning the town’s water supply, not telling them, and then shooting the survivors as they flee the town.

No question that slaughtering fleeing survivors is worse. But either way, you’re being asked to sign your name to poisoning innocent people.

You can only see “you’re voting for slaughtering fleeing townspeople!” But plenty of people cannot stomach voting for poisoning the townspeople in the first place.

You’re both looking at the same situation but seeing different elements.

The nuance comes in here: both are valid stances to take. If you don’t vote “against” shooting the survivors, there’s a greater chance survivors will be shot. But voting for the people poisoning the water supply is untenable for many, and not understanding why that is, is a huge problem.

Once they decided to skip the primary and started getting contributions to a Biden/Harris campaign, it became virtually impossible to select anyone else once Biden dropped out.

Right, and that was the first mistake, they should have held the primary.

Are you implying there was a qualified third party candidate? Is this an oxymoron?

I thought Chase Oliver was pretty decent. I especially like his immigration policies, I like that he's pretty young, and he seems to tick off both parties equally, so hopefully both parties would have to actually work together to get something he can sign. I highly doubt he'd get any of his policies done (except maybe ending tariffs, which would help a bit w/ prices), so the main benefit of having a third party in the White House is as a moderator between the two parties.

He had absolutely no chance to win, especially since his own party largely turned on him (I guess he wasn't conservative enough or whatever), but I felt he was a decent protest vote.

You don't need to "dazzle" to win elections, you just need to be very clear about what you'll actually do if elected. Existing isn't enough to win votes.

I did quite a bit of research before the election, and I still can't tell you anything concrete that Harris plans to do, not even in the first 100 days of being elected. Here's the best I got:

• ban "price gouging" - what does this mean? Price caps? I don't think she's that crazy, this feels empty
• taxes - these are somewhat concrete, but new revenue will likely be low because wealthy people are good at avoiding taxes
• immigration - one of her major jobs as VP was border security, yet she didn't do much, so I question how committed she actually is to her proposed changes, nor do I know if she wants to increase or decrease net immigration

So, her plans are either vague or seem ineffective, so what would she actually do in office? It's not clear, and it seems like she's running just because the DNC needs someone to run. I don't want a President who is running just because their party said so, I want a President who sees actual problems and has a plan to resolve them.

That said, my vote absolutely doesn't matter because my state has consistently gone to Republicans, and will consistently go to Republicans for the foreseeable future, so I don't know what people in swing states think. But what I do know is that her campaign was entirely uninteresting.

The recent election and 2016 say otherwise. When Biden said he'd follow Sanders' policies, he won the biggest margins ever in American history.

Fascism is tempting for undecideds and people scared of the future. Some dude says "hey you're hurt, I'll help you" you might not care what the costs are as long as you feel safer.

We could have built a policy of "Everyone is hurt, everyone needs a leader, I can be a leader for those Trump is targeting." She could have been a silver bullet to Trump's thick skull. She could have done so many things differently than Biden or Trump, and she played to the middle ground.

And the middle ground was still pro-border protections, fracking, not listening to the marginalized people Trump hates, and how the policies could improve America at the cost of the trolley problem of Gaza. Instead we're getting none of her promises, but Trump is getting all of his high demands for order and fascism.