Shes a hawk, plain and simple. Her support for Iraq, her spear heading of Libya, her support of arming "moderate" rebels in Syria. The list goes on. To call her just more conservative isnt accurate at all, especially when actual neocons are flocking to her over Trumps confusing, and in some cases, hands off foreign policy.

Yes, she's been in the Third Way camp for decades, making accommodation with Republicans and trying to poach their voters for two decades. But this election isn't like the 90s or 00s. She doesn't have to make accommodation since there's more support for liberal policy than there was when Bill was President. And her support for liberal domestic policy never wavered. So no, she's not the best representative for liberals but she is the best one left standing. Democrats and liberals who deny that are deluding themselves. We can't afford to be single issue voters if we want to continue the recovery from the Bush administration.

I would love to put my support behind a better candidate like Sanders or Stein but it doesn't look like I'll be given that option. So I'm not going to make best the enemy of good.

You've found a kind of grace in your cognitively dissonant support for Hillary Kissinger that one could very much admire for sheer party discipline. I don't want to touch it, for fear it might shatter. So let's not take up anything you're going to have enough troubles stomaching in the years ahead, and let me just say I've always enjoyed your moral clarity and it speaks highly of you that you've tried to find it even in this changeling candidacy.

No, please touch it. Tell me what my alternative options are.

Do I vote for the steaming turd that is Trump? Don't make me laugh.

Do I vote for the "moderate" Gary Johnson, who promises streets of gold paved by good intentions? Not a chance.

Do I vote for Bernie Sanders, writing him in even though he's advised his supporters not to do so and has no chance of winning short of a miracle granting him the DNC nomination?

Do I vote for Jill Stein who has roughly the same chance as Gary Johnson of having any impact in our elections?

How about Donald Duck? Should I vote for the wackiest of all candidates and pretend like my vote doesn't matter?

Please, tell me your words of wisdom that will shatter my illusions and resolve my cognitive dissonance.

It's not that I think I can shatter anything. It's that, having known you as a fair-minded inquirer for a few years now, I know you can only keep so many contradictions lashed together however tightly for just so long. They say a first rate mind “can hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” I haven't any doubt you can maintain party discipline until you vote in the election. I do, however, imagine that you will regret having been so dishonest with yourself in order to do so. Not least when immediately after the election that whole raft of waiting treaties that includes the TPP is forced through.

You've never been a "my country, right or wrong" type, nor do I think are you entirely comfortable as a "my party, right or wrong" partisan.

Vote for, or against, whomever you want, or not at all. Let me only suggest you not lie to yourself why.

You've got a point about the decades of scandal-mongering, Republican propaganda aimed at the easily-suggestible, the gullibility it would take to believe a walking personality disorder like Trump is presidential timber. Steel your nerve, though. You're less convincing when you pretend the only worrying things about the Clintons are the endless conspiracies against them — when you wave away undeniable problems with her as a candidate by describing them as her 'making accommodation' or 'trying to poach their voters' or 'making the best be the enemy of the good.' It ought be possible for you to vote for her knowing full well what's there for anyone with eyes to see. You'd look more natural holding your nose than stage whispering how sweetly everything smells and making faces like that.

I find it curious that you accuse me of lying to myself. I have not declared Clinton to be the best possible candidate or that she's as pure as the newly driven snow. I have only pointed out that I don't buy into two decades of conservative-driven scandal mongering against her. She has policy positions (primarily foreign policy) that I abhor but her domestic policy is much, much closer to what I'm looking for. Since I can't have the candidate I want I'll work with the candidate available to me. Third party candidates aren't viable, and I'm not willing to risk a repeat of 2000 when I voted for Nader.

I'm curious to know what you think another candidate will do better than Clinton and how that justifies your support. Unless your opposition isn't based on her legislative record so much as the Republicans' unending attempts to find some scandal -- anything at all -- that they can make stick against her.