The political fight for America is the fight for the politics of the 50th-most progressive or conservative Senator, the 218th-most prog or con US Rep, and the equivalents in state legislatures and city councils. The presidency is very important but the legislature legitimizes.

I don't think everyone understands this intuitively, especially young people. Most olds get it, though.

Is Senator #50 Susan Collins, or Lisa Murkowski, or Joe Manchin, or Kyrsten Sinema, or Mark Warner? It makes a lot of difference to political outcomes. Want to enact more progressive policies? Work hard to elect senators who are further left (even slightly) than any of these.

Same with the House. Same at the state level. Same at the city level. Same with elected judiciary. Move the political center of the deliberative bodies left (or right, if that's your thing) by working to elect candidates somewhat further from the center.

Find the candidate at the top of the ticket uninspiring and/or repugnant? Leave that office blank on your ballot if you must (though do consider SCOTUS and climate change), but work to move the center down-ballot.

Sitting out the election, or voting reluctantly but not helping to encourage the like-minded to vote, is ceding the center of the politics of governance to the opposition. And you'll just have much, much more work to do next time.

The same strategy, it should be said, also applies to governors and mayors, all of whom (along with the president, of course) have the power of appointment. Executives near the political middle don't necessarily appoint centrists; they fill offices from party-approved lists.

When it comes to the appointed judiciary, in most cases that means lifetime seats chosen from the *party* center/edges. Ceding an executive election to the opposition because of the major candidate lacking sufficiently favorable ideology means ceding untold lifetime appointments.

Republicans have always understood this, and they understood this extremely well in 2016.