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I think there were plenty of us who did this in 2016, and then again in 2020, both after the primaries, if you wanted to see the democrats go in the bernie direction after being disappointed by obama and democrat supermajorities in 2009. Although the culture war issues shifted such that I just abandoned the democrats anyway instead of trying to push them in any direction.
Actually the Fuentes strategic vote-for-democrats angle didn't really make sense to me at first, as someone who never really had much hope in the republicans in the first place, and am still just wanting to see the current democrats punished, wiped out, and remade as something else. But then I realized it's almost an identical feeling for him and other young guys as the 2016 era bernie bros: they actually want to see a lot of the current republicans wiped out and remade as something better, and are looking strategically to the future: 'if hillary wins, the democrats are actually more fucked long-term, she'll be the automatic candidate again in 2020, some goof is her VP next in line, no more competitive primaries for a long time, people learn the wrong lessons, etc.'. 'If vance & rubio aren't severely damaged, then there won't be an open competitive primary with any oxygen for something better / more extreme in the republican party for a decade or more'.
Maybe it's always guys in their 20s who are more willing to make moves like this. Though as you guys mentioned, for a lot of people who could never stand the social stigma of switching to voting republican, the usual (more cowardly IMO) path is just to try to loudly vote 3rd-party as punishment to at least be slightly strategic as a voting block.
I will say that having Labour win in the UK was almost certainly better than having the Tories limp back in, even if they had an anti-immigration leader. They would have been under constant attack from a Left who could plausibly claim that they would be able to fix voter concerns in a nice and sensible way and voters just need to get the Tories out.
That was Keir Starmer's whole platform, and it's failed totally. Now, the Labour government has done a lot of damage - decriminalising homelessness this morning, so now we can have our own tent cities! - but they've actually tried reasonably hard on immigration and (in a sense) on public order, and failed totally. Which has produced a much stronger sense of 'the current system is completely broken and needs radical (R)eform' than anything the Tories could have got a mandate for.
It feels kind of perverse to say "I hope my guy loses" but losing isn't always a terrible thing. I suspect Trump 2020 would have been a far less powerful president than Trump 2024.
Sometimes to win a war you have to choose to retreat from certain battles
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