but I share your sense of cynical or strategic voting, though I could never bring myself to actually vote for Trump.

I've never been more incorrect as to my personal prognostications concerning this election cycle. Nonetheless, I still have this a feeling that Trump's campaign is going to come to an end for any number of reasons before the election and he may either end up becoming a Russian citizen or volunteering in a soup line. Who knows? Similarly, Clinton isn't out of the woods yet either. In fact, she's just high stepping it deeper and deeper into the brush and not so fashionable wrist bracelets may become a part of her jewelry collection. Handcuffs by Prada? I would savor such an image and have it made into a big flag.

I can't disagree. I find the prospect of a Trump presidency far less dangerous than the Harpy Clinton in the White House.

Your essay was well thought out and brought to light some of my own feelings on the matter.

is impossible. I find most of the Hillary supporters trying to goad me into that argument. "How could you vote for anyone but Hillary ? A vote 3rd party is a vote for Trump."

People don't have a clue what Trump will do or won't do, including Trump himself. He doesn't even know what's going to come out of his mouth in the next 10 seconds. I know exactly what Hillary will do, and it won't be anything good.

But let's play out the "You must vote for one of the two party candidates because we KNOW, only they can win." philosophy. So November comes and one of the two wins. Then what ? Well, it will be four years of hell followed by another election in 2020 and guess what ? The two parties will generate another shit sandwich - two giant turd candidates with a gooey bullshit middle. But we MUST vote for one because the other is so sooooooo awful.

This system, is guaranteed to be self sustaining if we all keep voting for GOP and Dem candidates. I hear it every election, Romney, McCain, Bush, Dole etc etc, it never ends. And the Dem "alternative" is just about as shitty. It's a system with a guaranteed outcome: environmental decay, concentrations of wealth, authoritarian policing and global strife.

Sorry Bernie but I'll be voting 3rd party. The best I can realistically hope for is a strong 3rd party option in 2020. But that beats the hell outta this 2 party - self perpetuating nonsense.

Trump is less dangerous than the Clintons ( both of them)

Think a third party vote in this election is symbolic, personally feel we owe it to the rest of the world to try to prevent Clintons keeping control of the Democratic party, and keeping the warmongers out of the White House. Believe only remote chance of reforming Democratic party from within is to defeat the Clintons.

Let's see:
Hill + (Bill) = WWlll, TPP, Misery, Plutocracy, (Bimbo Eruptions)
Trump = Republican Party (in the) Dumpster
Jill = Third Party Viability

The winning strategy, as others have noted here recently, might be to vote Trump in purple states and Jill in Red and Blue states. Hill and Bill must not get their sticky fingers back in the White House. Once there, they'll NEVER leave. In fact, I'd make book that after eight years, Chelsea becomes prez, after a stint as the junior senator from New York. By then, ALL the voting machines will be hackable.

U.S. imperialism. There's a story out now about how Trump was asking in a foreign policy meeting why he couldn't just "use nukes". I remember early on one of his primary advisors went on TV and said "what's the use of having nuclear weapons if we don't use them?" He's surrounded himself with people completely on board with the false narratives about the war OF terror. His rhetoric about Muslims and torture show he has bought in to the neverending war. His remarks about NATO, while on the surface sounding like a less aggressive approach, indicate his main problem is how much money the U.S. spends compared to other NATO countries, the same thing the neocons are focusing on to maintain U.S. and NATO imperialism.
The agenda of the U.S. is to remain the world's sole superpower and to maintain hegemony (full spectrum dominance) over the planet. I don't see how Trump would challenge that.
Trump is an imbalanced sociopath who doesn't know shit and will bend with the wind when push comes to shove. He's all about capitalism and at this stage of global capitalism, it is the highest form of imperialism. It's hard to say he's as bad as Clinton, she sets the bar too high. But it won't make much difference imo, whether its her or him.
The American people should reject both candidates one way or another.

should not, btw, call it the "third party option."

For us it should be called "realignment."

Here's another frontpaged diary about realignment, which explains in brief the historic context of realignment.

For the record, I would have to agree with you insofar as you are arguing that there's no point in voting only once against the greater evil (whether that be Clinton or Trump) when you can vote twice. The problem for me, then, is that I am not motivated merely to cast a vote against the greater evil.

Lesser-evil voting is what brought us this year's choice. What we need is realignment, and a new set of choices. The more likely realignment option, as I see it, is that the Republican Party will die and the Democratic Party will in all likelihood become a right-wing uniparty of sorts. The Republican elites will no doubt jump ship and join the Democrats, who in all likelihood will impose the "Virginia model" (see e.g. Jim Webb, Tim Kaine) upon the rest of the Democratic Parties. The Republican Party will become a regional party as a result, somewhat mirroring the American Independent Party of 1968.

The only thing missing from such a formulation is a party to represent the working class. The Green Party, despite its faults, is the closest thing we've got at this point. So I'm voting Green.

lines as you James, and I've also considered voting for Trump using very similar logic. The problem as I see it, is that Trump has very little chance of winning this election, no matter who we vote for. This, for a variety of reasons I don't need to go into here. A third party has even less chance than Trump. So in all likelihood HRC will be the next president, and I don't believe there's much that anyone can do to prevent it.

That being the case (IMO) voting for Stein would at least register a protest against both main Parties and their abominable candidates. Distaste for both Trump and Clinton is a widely shared sentiment now, all across the nation. And most, if not all effective progressive action will be originating from outside the Dem Party, after Clinton is inaugurated. The sooner we can start building coalitions there, the better -- and Jill Stein would surely have a role in that "movement", whatever it shapes up to be.

Hillary supporters and others really are afraid of Trump more than Hillary, and Trump supporters are scared of Hillary. I just can't play this game of extortion anymore. I'm sick of it. That's why I'm voting for Jill even though its already rigged for Hillary.

. . . makes it impossible for me to even remotely consider voting for HRC. I cannot vote for the Donald either.

Why? The climate crisis.

I don't know that much about Jill's running mate yet. Am disappointed it was not Nina.

It really feels like so much is up in the air still, especially after reading this essay and all of the interesting comments.

Look what Bernie's campaign did for the Democratic Party platform: it is far more progressive than it would have been without his efforts. Imagine the Green Party with enough registered members to get matching Federal funds and a seat at the table of public political discourse. The likely course of the Democratic Party would be to adopt some of the Green platform to use as a sales technique during the General Election. They could make the argument that they were better than the Republicans on Green Party issues, and try to peel off Green voters by pointing out quite correctly, that the Republicans were worse, and the Democrats might only get a "half a loaf" for the Greens, but that would be better than no loaf at all if the Republicans were to win.

someone else has pointed out that a Trump presidency might prod Congress to reign in the President's war powers and surveillance authority.

The problem that I have is his selection of Pence. His talk about bringing Carl Icahn into his administration, his cultivation of Rick Perry, Chris Christie, Sarah Palin, Ben Carson, Gingrich and others doesn't exactly signal any kind of progressive appeal.

Meanwhile Clinton is unveiling a new billionaire validator every day from now until November. What a joke.

The major party choices in this election are equally depressing. Even though Trump isn't a half-way credible messenger, unlike Clinton, he has at least pretended to engage in outreach to Sanders supporters. Clinton isn't even trying. It's clear that her campaign is all in with the Jeb Bush "moderate" Republican strategy. They have taken Sanders 13+ million votes for granted and have the audacity to whine about how Sanders supporters still "owe" Clinton votes.