Your understanding is solid for not being an American. You're not missing anything substantial-- people who are voting 3rd party think that the "dems need to learn" and that the dems can't do whatever they want so their vote is supposed to be a punishment. But as you point out that if they really cared about this issue then they would vote for Harris because trump will do worse on this issue and all around. The time to make changes to our political system is not when you vote for president, but in the years leading up to that.

In other words, people voting for 3rd party or Trump over this issue are morons. It sucks that our political system is what it is but if you knowingly vote for anything other than the candidate promising not-fascism, then you are supporting fascism.

I just hope enough democrats understand this. I'm not happy with gaza either but our country is still recovering from the first shit show presidency of Trump, and fascists are closely watching this election.

they exist, but the electoral system is designed to keep them from gaining power. And since (most) states use first past the post, secondary preferences aren't taken into account, so if you vote third party when you would have voted for Harris otherwise you increase Trumps chance of winning. There's some argument to be made that voting third party or not voting might influence democrats in the future to change their policy to appeal to those voters but I don't know how realistic that is.