It's been a long while since I paid daily attention to internecine conflicts within the DNC. But I have a hard time taking seriously the idea that Clinton would lean more toward the progressive faction than Obama did. That she was an intraparty weathervane, I grant you. But once you get to be the president, intraparty factionalism ceases to be your major concern. You need to get the other guys on board, too. And I think it's much more optimistic than realistic to imagine she'd govern one whit further to the left than the most ideologically right-wing coalition in Congress would be willing to put up with. And if in the first place the progressive faction, who seem to have been behind Sanders all the way, were stronger than the neoliberal faction behind Clinton, then why did the DNC show such blatant favoritism toward the latter, at the expense of the former?

As for Trump, I'm not sure "normalization" is the word. His utter failure to even pretend to stand by his word has him shedding supporters in every direction; he has the respect of no one and the support only of those who stand to lose in a serious way when he goes down; he's looking more and more likely every day to be impeached before the midterms, rather than after. I fail to see how this qualifies as "normalization", rather than, say, the construction of Trump from both sides as a frightening and dangerous aberration of the US system which must be prevented from recurring whether that can be comfortably done within "politics as usual" or not - after all, Trump getting elected in the first place puts us pretty well beyond the realm of politics as usual all by itself.

To your argument about ideology taking precedence over practicality, I should think that the groundswell of support for Sanders, frustrated or otherwise, puts paid pretty well to that all by itself. Conventional conservative ideology would regard more or less his entire platform as anathema, and yet states generally regarded to be as conventionally conservative as they come swung heavily enough in Sanders' favor that it's quite difficult to construct a counterfactual in which he stood opposite Trump and still lost. A candidate we both agree was

And - honestly, McMullin or Johnson? Whatever power I have in this world, whatever influence I can exercise toward those political outcomes I consider most beneficial, I have only to the extent that I'm able to persuade and compel via argument and discussion - even if I'd otherwise like to imagine that my vote for Trump somehow contributed to his victory, my state's electors went to Clinton. But when I say "I voted for Trump, but...", it catches people's interest - it makes them want to listen, not least because I live in a city and a state where that's the sort of thing people keep quiet about. If I were instead to say "I voted for Johnson, and...", it would only make people laugh and crack Aleppo jokes, and if I were to say "I voted for McMullin, but...", the answer I'd get would be "Who?"

When people laugh at me or stare with blank incomprehension, I am helpless; to be otherwise, I need people not to dismiss me outright, but remain engaged enough for discussion to be possible. (Buying them beer doesn't hurt, either. But I need to be taken more seriously than "humor the nutbag who's paying for our drinks", too.) On top of that, with the general perception that a third-party vote is a wasted vote and that people who do so regardless are so politically naïve as to be not worth taking seriously, well...put it this way: I'm not sure in what world you live that a vote for Johnson or McMullin would improve, rather than impair, my chances of starting a potentially worthwhile conversation. But whichever world that is, it doesn't contain the bars I go to.