Thank you for reading and for putting so much time into a reply. I do respect that.

I recognize that you are not going to convince me, and I am not going to convince you on any of our points of contention. Voting, like most things human do, has a large component of subjectivity.

Maybe "reasons" was the wrong word to use. Guesses? Opinions?

I have not respected the vast majority of our presidents. I'm disgusted particularly by Democrats because I perceive they should know better, but my understanding was that Bill Clinton destroyed the system of public benefits and also incarcerated more people than ever before. Barack Obama turned out to be a war hawk who prosecuted more whistleblowers than any president before or since, and also sold out universal healthcare to big money insurance interests.

Speaking to the bully point, anti-abortion people believe are you are a bully to a fetus who happens to be within a person's body. I am not going to rehash all the tired old abortion arguments because I recognize it is futile. It is simply never going to make sense to me that a baby inside the womb at whatever age can be killed, but as soon as it pops out, even if premature, you don't get to kill it.

But I do recognize the inherent inequalities and hardships in the system of making abortion illegal. I am willing to come that way and have even voted for Democratic candidates in a way that I have never voted for a Republican.

In short, I think our two-party system puts us all at these far-away points on the spectrum. I would like to see multi-party candidates and races, and coaltion governments where people of different parties would be forced to work together more than this "all or nothing" nonsense.

Totally agreed that people do not understand policy. Most of the rich people I know own corporations that directly profit from taking money from the government in various subsidies and programs, and yet they also rail against government "handouts" to the poor.