That analysis makes no sense on multiple levels. First of all, since I don’t live in a swing state, my downballot/midterm votes are far more important than my vote for president. Second, if my vote for president was so important, that would be all the more reason for me to use it as leverage. Third, the fundamental dynamics are the same for downballot races as the race for president, there is nothing unique about the presidential race that would mean I should treat it differently. If withholding a vote is an effective strategy downballot, then it is an effective strategy in the presidential race. And if the risk of Trump getting elected is too great to employ that strategy in the presidential race, then the risk of another Republican getting elected downballot should be a deterrent too. Lastly, there is virtually no chance that Kamala could be pressured to change her position during the midterms when she herself is not up for reelection.

The only way I can make any sense of your logic is if Trump is uniquely horrible compared to other Republicans, and I don’t really consider that to be the case.

If your ideals don’t match at all you’ve either got a failure of ideals, or a failure of government, which one probably depends on which one is at a larger scale.

Well, let’s see. For the past 20 years, my entire adult life, my ideals have been saying that we should stop slaughtering people in the middle east. In that time, the democrats ran Kerry, a hawk, Obama, a hawk, Clinton, a hawk, Biden, a hawk, and now Harris, a hawk. The result of that was nearly a million people dead in Iraq and Afghanistan, some more in other countries like Yemen, and now more and at a faster rate than ever in Palestine. And what exactly do they have to show for any of it in terms of making people’s lives better? I think it’s pretty clear which side the failure is on.