Sure there is, but too many progressive voters just seem to be unwilling to act to get them. It takes long term planning.

Let's look at Barack Obama, a man whose political career to President was considered to be extremely fast, and who was considered to be very inexperienced and a shockingly fast rise.

He was elected President of the Harvard Law Review in 1990, 18 years before he would become President of the USA. In 1992 he directed a voter registration project/drive in Chicago that was successful enough to be big news. In 1996 he was elected to the Illinois State Senate, and in 2000 he lost the primary for a US Representative position.

But here's a very important part: in 2003 he became chairman of a state committee when Democrats regained a majority. This allowed him to have some legislative successes, specifically in the field of racial profiling. Hmm, that ain't gonna be important in Illinois ever again, is it?

With that legislative success, he was able to win the primary for Senate, but even then, this essentially required the incumbent in that slot to be gone. Then he was a Senator for merely four years before becoming President. And also notably for those who act like the DNC simply anoints candidates, he beat Hillary in the primary, despite her being favored by most of the entrenched elite of the party.

And the important thing to remember is this was a startlingly fast political career, considered by everyone to be a meteoric rise, an outlier. He was in politics for only 12 years before becoming President, though he did politics adjacent things even earlier. A more expected career would probably go for 20 to 30 years before becoming President.

So you want voter action for more progressive candidates? It starts a quarter century ago, in state-level offices like the Illinois Senate. It starts by getting those candidates elected over goddamn decades.

Politics is like farming, you can't show up in harvest season, look around, and go 'where are all the crops?' and then be pissy that there's gonna be a famine this winter. You gotta show up in the planting season, plant those crops, take care of them, keep them healthy and watered and fertilized as they grow, so you can finally get your food when harvest time comes.

So you want to complain about the lack of candidates, well here's my question: where the fuck were you all in planting season a quarter of a century ago? Cause these crops take a goddamn while to grow.

You are not limited to just your vote on the day of presidential elections in terms of your political engagement

There seems to be no voter action that can produce a more progressive candidate.

It's almost like they don't want you to have one.

If neither winning nor losing does progressives any favours, then there's no issue with trying to make the least bad realistic option win

I'm gonna say (as someone that was sucked into the psychological torture machine that was the conservative media loop in 2016) that Hillary didn't lose for being a moderate. Trump was by far at his strongest in 2016; his insanity was a basically unknown factor and he did a legitimately great job seeming to flip the bird at 'the system', and the conservative propaganda machine had a LOT of points to attack Hillary with that had nothing to do with her moderate politics. Trump promised the world and had all the charisma to sell the world too, and Hillary... I honestly can't remember anything about her platform at all.

In my personal opinion, Hillary could absolutely have won that election if the Democrats hadn't been complacent about it. Maybe not a landslide victory, but I think it would have been a very solid win.

FWIW, we ran Hillary Clinton as a moderate candidate and lost.

You call that Kissinger/Thatcher mashup monstrosity "moderate?"

Hillary was a moderate?

In 2016 the pre election polls showed a rock paper scissors ordering.

• Trump beats Hillary

• Hillary beats Bernie

• Bernie beats Trump

The last occurred because Bernie was a different enough candidate to attract a certain subset of Republicans.