i also refuse to not vote my conscience but i figured this time its not like doing this abstract process to pick if id prefer -100 points vs -200 points is gonna matter that much if i genuinely believe itll even be slightly better under kamala i might as well

Not calling your buddy Ben Shapiro, but that's a Shapiro-esque sentence. Throw out as much shit as you can is as short a time as possible so that any response would basically have to be novel length.

• He says he will not vote for his conscience, yet he votes for someone he clearly views as bad.
• He says the process is not abstract, then makes abstractions.
• He says he believes things will be slightly better under Kamala (not incorrect, it's his belief. It is the belief that is wrong here. Things will not be better under Kamala)
  a. going into the third point requires a lot of work, and I can imagine you've already talked a lot about that particular topic, so that's also just shitty of him to disregard whatever you've said like that.
• Unrelated to the sentence, but if he is defeatist then he should view Trump as the better of the two candidates, considering the fact that he is currently experiencing the system under Kamala-lite (if he believes what she says, she is basically campaigning on being a more right-wing Joe Biden)

I personally would focus on how voting for better domestic policies will do nothing but make things worse. The extermination machine will not stop in Gaza, it will come home. There will be no better domestic policies. I would focus on the massive resistance towards all the things the dems are doing, that Trump couldn't do because he was either incompetent or because the general populace exerted enough pressure to stop it.
Trump pardoned a sheriff and even that was a massive scandal (as it should be, but let's not pretend people would have given a shit under Biden.)

edit: on the bright side you get to give your friend the experience every leftist dreams of: Living in a world were they are considered reactionairy

Radicalize them

He is on the whole defeatist 'nothing will fundamentally shake the imperial machine so might as well pick the wardog with better domestic policies' tip.

I'd throw that right back as the reason you aren't voting lmao!

Why get worked up if nothing is fundamentally going to change?

Because, sniff, they ideologically do act as though things can change

It really doesn't matter who he votes or doesn't vote for. Everybody is anxious for reasons good and bad. Just let him do what he wants. He'll probably feel dumb about it later. I won't vote for her, and I'll tell people why, but I don't tell them not to either.

What are you trying to accomplish?

Voting doesnt matter, you can vote if itll save your friendship but its not going to do anything else and they should know that

‘nothing will fundamentally shake the imperial machine so might as well pick

I hate to be the first person in history to point this out, but your friend's vote doesn't determine who sits in the imperial throne. Your friend's vote is a superficial indicator of personal support for a given aspiring war criminal. The imperial president is appointed by an unelected council of elders chosen by from the two wings of the US bourgeois party.

Just lie about who or if you voted dawg

He has capitulated to this shithole society and is a knowing supporter of the genocide. It's one thing to be politically ignorant about what's going on in Gaza, but he has no excuse. He knows that the IOF is beheading Palestinian children with bombs and he is still going to support the party who gave the IOF the bombs anyways. This is betrayal. All that doomer nonsense is just that: nonsense. If he was a true doomer, he wouldn't bother voting. He would just be like my dad who last voted in the 2000 election and completely checked out from politics since then (his politics suck, so that's a good thing). George Carlin in his later years when he mocked people who wasted their time voting saying that he got more to show for it by beating his meat could be said to be a doomer. Your friend is just a polite supporter of genocide.