Josef K

I have to get more concise - not only does it make people less likely to read my posts, it means I'm always several posts behind.
I don't know, I think there's value in somebody being on the record supporting something good that they otherwise wouldn't be. Although we saw this less with Obama because he sort of ran as the anti-establishment candidate (although, let's be honest, that is/was theater), it's definitely the case that just to get "progressives" (whatever that means) to settle down, Clinton's campaign is going to focus more on certain issues which, even if she doesn't actually put policies in place to accomplish whatever these things are, will bring said issues to the forefront of public discourse and hopefully mobilize supporters. Obviously that won't solve all problems, but I think it can result in good things happening.
But your personal well-being isn't the metric by which you ought to evaluate elections. I'm probably personally better off if Republicans win because my family is pretty well-off (although my parents also teach at a public university, and there's some health care reform stuff that affects me because of my leg, but whatever, not the point), but I also value not going to war with Iran (just for example). Even if you aren't one of the Iranian civilians who would die if we invaded, even if you aren't going to be in the military, even if it's really really unlikely that you're going to be hurt by a terrorist attack that's blowback from American imperialism, even if you aren't affected at all, this election still affects lots of people who aren't you, and I believe that you ought to care about them, because, you know, it's good to care about people. (I should also note now that I'm sort of uninterested in debating from first principles whether this is a productive outlook to have or not.)

I guess that brings me to the other thing I want to address, which is that I strongly believe in voting for the lesser of two evils, and I strongly believe in voting for a party and not a person. This doesn't quite make me a straight-ticket Democratic voter (uh, when I can vote, that is) - I am a socialist and in a race that isn't close I will either not vote or vote for the candidate who I think best represents my views - but it's important to recognize that lives do hang in the balance, if not in your individual decision about how to vote, then in the ultimate result of the election. In fact, this next presidential election is crucial because the winner will potentially be able to appoint four Supreme Court justices - so you should decide whether you'd like a Court with five Sam Alitos, or a Court with a moderate/liberal majority. If you prefer the former that's fine, although I disagree, but given that the Court is making decisions that affect tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people, you absolutely should care.
Yeah I'm fine with saying this. I have no doubt that most politicians are not good people, but I really couldn't care less about that. Frankly the policies a person is likely to put in place and the administration they're likely to appoint are much more important to me than, like, whether they've cheated on a spouse.