The American education system has failed you. I’m assuming by “a progressive candidate” in this case you mean a third party, but in a first-past-the-post voting system, voting third-party is a protest vote. At best, people voting third-party shows that voters don’t have confidence in the major parties, but at worst it helps your least preferred of the two major parties win the election because you’re not begrudgingly voting for the candidate you hate less. A third-party president is an unimaginable upset.

But if you’re not living in a swing state nobody cares how you vote for president anyway. Hopefully you got a good option for Congress in the primaries. That’s the only thing I had any chance of influencing at a federal level for this election cycle. I’m not in a swing state and in the final election I only got one option for senate and all one candidate could say was that they weren’t the other candidate.