Or is it where decades of mostly ignoring anything but presidential elections has gotten us? Where mot participating in most of the process has gotten us and then we want there to be just the choice we want, waiting for us at the end?

Again, you seem to be willingly missing the point. Up until the election, you had an entire year to fight tooth and nail for better. At the election, you only have two choices and no amount of "they both suck I refuse to do anything but sit here and tell everyone else they fucked up by letting it get to this point" will change that. You had two choices only and refused to make a single one, letting the worst happen.

Are you aware of the world around you enough to know how it got here? They voted red every single time and pulled things slightly more to the right every time they could. They didn't like their candidates, but they understood they won't get where they want to immediately. You have to incrementally get there because people are awful and scared of change so they kept working at it election by election. Meanwhile, people like you said "well this is not the perfect choice so I'm going to sit around and pout about it" and do nothing to even slow their progress.