I agree with Clinton on maybe 90% of issues. The ones where I disagree with her - banking regulation, trade agreements, use of military force - she is still middle-left of most Americans, plus she’s at least nominally changed her stand on the first two. I have no trouble voting for Clinton in the fall and feeling OK, even good, about the vote.
The primary has unfortunately caused many progressives to obsess over those few issues where she is not a progressive, and have elevated them to somehow be the most (or only) important ones. We need to be careful about not becoming single-issue voters.
One should vote for whoever one is comfortable voting for, even nobody if that’s the case, but as a couple of us brought up in other threads 3rd party votes have never moved the main parties in the direction of the 3rd party, and in some cases seem to have worked in the other direction, allowing party centrists to dismiss the wings as marginals who will just leave and vote for someone else. Announcing early that you won’t vote for Clinton - even if you don’t plan to - is counterproductive.
Moreover, Stein is not at all qualified to be president; the only people I can think of from recent elections that are less qualified are Gary Johnson and Ralph Nader. Even Trump is more qualified. Here I’m using “qualified” in the sense of having had experience making big decisions and then negotiating with people to try to bring these decisions about, which is the primary job of any politician, especially in an executive position.
As for whether a vote in a non-swing state matters, it makes a substantial difference to a sitting president’s political capital whether they won 30% of the vote in a state or won 40% of the vote in that state. Anyone who see things in grayscales instead of black/white should understand it isn’t just about “winning” or “losing”.
