RE: Things will never change until...
Not possible, for almost anyone. Everything is trade offs.
To use a non-political example, I'd love to "vote" for a life where I sleep all day and still earn 6 figures. That's not possible, so I trade 8 hours/day of working for being able to earn 6 figures.
The whole "lesser of two evils" is really a misnomer. It's for people who can't be reasonable about things, who need their candidate to embody everything they want. That simply isn't possible. A friend of mine constantly spouts that shit, and loves Gary Johnson... but he's had to accept that Johnson actually varies in a few different views from perfection. So technically even for him Johnson is "the lesser of two evils."
I'd love to have Bernie, but he lost... so it's Clinton. She's not as good as Bernie, but she still promises more of the policies I want than any other candidate. It's the only option.
(Well, I might vote Johnson if I'm sure my state will go to Clinton just to get more attention for third parties. The lack of attention we give them is the real problem, but I also think that's fed by our third parties being too extreme.)
Certainly there's no candidate out there that's a 100% match for almost anyone's belief system. As you state, it's about trade offs. I'm simply pointing out that there are far more options out there that if chosen could help bring real change in the long term. There's no doubt that 3rd party candidates stand no chance to win this election or the next. However, there can be no storm until the first droplets fall and are followed up by more, wave after wave. If we never begin the journey, we'll never get to the end of the journey.
You've clearly never heard of a flash flood! ;)
If only that were possible in this case... :)
In my opinion, Jill Stein is a much better candidate that Gary Johnson. There really is no good excuse for not knowing what Aleppo is, and Johnson's recent inability to name a single world leader he admires just makes it worse. Also, recent reports state that climate change is ALREADY at the point of disaster and we can't even build a single new fossil fuel project if we want to have any chance of avoiding more disasters and sea level rise etc., and Johnson does not take climate change seriously at all. He also supports the TPP. He's rather foolish and severely lacking on various issues. I personally want third parties to get more exposure and participate in the debates, but frankly, I think Johnson would make third parties look bad if he made it in. He declined to debate Jill Stein on Democracy Now's expansion of the first debate, so Stein simply went on and answered the debate questions alone. Compare their platforms and how they perform in interviews, etc.