A voter who won’t vote for anyone but their perfect candidate is electorally useless in a country of hundreds of millions. Democracy is about compromise, and compromise often means nobody is particularly happy about the outcome because nobody gets all of exactly what they want.

for some reason I can't replay to jumpcrisscross below, so I'll put this here: Just cuz you can't get everything you want, doesn't mean you should have no 'hard lines' you're not willing to compromise on. So no, the past 20-30 years of 'the lesser of two evils' doesn't cut it anymore. I've voted for Dems. my whole life, but if they don't get a lot more effective, I wont be doing it in the future. When they had all 3 branches of legislature, they couldn't get stuff passed - everything got gutted or given away (remember the last shutdown when people begged them not to cave ?). Anyway, here's hoping for more independents and BrandNewCongress to pickup steam.

They realized that diminishing women's rights, just to please a few men who desire to be women, was a significant vote loser, and changed their policy positions accordingly.

This is a good thing. Though it would have been better if they hadn't pushed these policies in the first place. Still, it's progress.

Look at the opponents of Democrats (the party), and where they stand on trans rights. Most Democrats support trans rights, almost no Republicans do. We can all close our eyes and wish we had a system that didn't reduce down to two parties, but at the end of the day we're all going to get either a Democrat or a Republican representing us unless you live in a hyper specific part of the country.

Earlier today I had to grit my teeth and vote for Josh Turek in Iowa, even though I think he's a shithead who threw trans people under the bus just to eke out a few more votes from conservative fence sitters. I could've made a protest vote, but the realpolitik of the situation is I'm either getting Turek or his Republican opponent, and I think Turek will do a much better job representing me despite his dumbass about-face on trans issues, whereas the Republican will be actively harmful.

So you think you are better? What have you achieved? Your own purity, at the expense of your trans friends' rights? "Yeah, you are hounded now by crass Republicans who use every lever of power to make your life hell, but at least I didn't vote for a Democrat who may or may not have lied about his support! Praise me!"