A third-party vote is wasted in the context of the current election. It is definitely not wasted in terms of ballot access and public credibility for the subsequent elections.

If you don't expect to die before the next election, it is never a waste to vote for the option closest to what you actually want.

If you are always voting between your worst choice and your second-worst choice, it may be wiser to reconsider strategic voting altogether, and just pick what you want every time.

> A third-party vote is wasted in the context of the current election. It is definitely not wasted in terms of ballot access and public credibility for the subsequent elections.

I think there is a pair of words reversed here: it is not definitely wasted in terms of ballot access and public credibility for subsequent elections (that is, it is possible for it to have some impact on those things), but its most likely also wasted for those purposes, so "definitely not" is not accurate.

I don't understand why you are being downvoted. You are pointing out the biggest issue with the current political system in the US. It's de-facto a two party system. We could fix this by making it either a parliamentary system or changing the voting method to approval voting. With approval voting we wouldn't even need a primary and neither Trump nor Hilary would be anywhere near the Whitehouse, since they both had negative approval ratings during the primary.