So does it come down to this - the best candidates for our principles "can't win", so we must

[MH1]

62. We need to use a "ranked-choice" voting system, but we don't.

That said, I tried for a few years to get dems (IRL and at DU) to support ranked-choice voting and there was less than zero interest.

So screw it. You get to vote your principles in the primary. Then whoever the majority of the voters pick is your candidate for the general. If that's the "lesser" in your opinion, too bad. You can then either cast a vote that helps the less bad candidate, or a vote that helps the worst candidate. Whoever you go to sleep with that night, you wake up with yourself.

If we used rank-choice voting then you could vote for your principles with your first choice, and the pragmatic choice with your second. In that way elections would more accurately reflect the will of the voters. But in a country where large swaths can't even comprehend the basic principles of biological evolution, and/or think that 7 billion human beings rampantly and recklessly spewing tons of carbon into the climate while geo-engineering the planet couldn't possibly make a difference to climate ... yeah I'm not holding my breath for us to implement a voting system that requires 2 brain cells to rub together in order to understand it.