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I've been finding this phenomenon fascinating, though I'd say I find it more depressing than fascinating. But fascinating nonetheless. I'm reminded of the early 2010s when it first became apparent that the identity politics/social justice/progressive crowd ("woke," "CRT," and "DEI" are more common terms to refer to that crowd now) that I was a part of was focused primarily on using schoolyard bullying tactics to use coerce people into believing the correct ideological beliefs, with an open and severe disdain for convincing people via argumentation (it was around this time that I learned of Ben Shapiro, who was introduced to me essentially as the punchline to a joke about how close-minded and backwards those rightists were with their "facts don't care about your feelings" slogan). This was a surprise to me at the time, given that I'd always been raised believing that the left/liberal/progressive side was the side of science and intellectualism, and there's basically nothing more hostile to science and intellectualism than using coercion to convince people of something.
Of course, I've changed my mind since then. I think what helped to awaken me was the realization that my own honest, genuine belief in the correctness of my ideology was in itself the result of the type of coercion that I observed being done; when you see someone else being suckered into the same belief that you have, you start to wonder if you were the sucker in the past (this is also why, for completely selfish and cynical reasons, I am against using dishonesty or coercion to push forward any ideology I genuinely believe in). And I've observed the schoolyard bullying tactics only get worse in that time and gain greater prominence at tables with higher stakes.
And there really aren't any higher stakes than the POTUS election, at least in the realm of US politics, which is where it has reached now, with this new "weird" forced meme and the implausibly deniable reference to a lie about the VP candidate. Now, Trump probably deserves
blamecredit for bringing it that high, but Trump was one unique character that forcibly dragged his party to follow his lead by sheer popularity, while this new narrative seems to be something many Democratic operators are voluntarily coalescing around (whether it's coordinated or not doesn't matter). But more to the point, the entire point of voting for someone is that they're preferable to the other guy; if my side decides to bully people into being convinced to our side, then I can no longer trust my judgment that my side is better, because that judgment might have been coerced out of me rather than being the conclusion I reached through reasoning through my beliefs, wants, needs, etc. It's not that name-calling in itself makes the policies that my side wants just as bad as the policies that the other side wants, it's that the name-calling reveals to me that my preference for my side's policies are suspect.There's basically nothing that will stop me from voting for Kamala in November; my vote never counts in these elections anyway, and doubly so in Massachusetts, and if Kamala does win, I'll be able to honestly say that I cast a vote for the first black woman president - which in itself doesn't matter to me, but it certainly might matter to the bullies who would have good reason to be emboldened in that scenario. But I must admit, watching this campaign makes me feel worse and worse about doing this.
If you are in a solidly Blue/Red state and not excited for either of the major party candidate, you can make your vote count by voting for a third party candidate. It gives that party greater clout to influence the platforms of the major parties. Plus, if their candidate gets more than 5% of the national vote, that party gets access to some federal funds for the next election.
As best as I can tell, voting for a third party candidate is about as worthless as any other vote in this context. The odds that my one vote is what takes some third party candidate up from 4.99% to 5.00% or whatever the threshold is is astronomically low. The odds that my one vote takes the candidate's vote count across some threshold such that it allows the party to garner greater clout in some meaningful, true way is much higher, since there are many many such thresholds, but it's still astronomically small.
Still, I think it is a more valuable signal than abstaining. I constantly see people who just assume non-voters would break heavily Dem if forced to choose a side, but it is really hard to say for sure what would happen. But votes for 3rd party show up in a countable way, and reduce the total votes of the winner. Reducing them to below 50% even in victory is a good way to send a signal that they didn't win, the other guy just lost.
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