"I'll decide that one is too conservative, the other too liberal, and I'll be too disgusted with the whole thing to give a damn. It's the same every year."

Naturally. Standard divide and conquer tactics, RangerSteve. It's a very clever $ySStem you have in the USA, because it appears to offer a genuine choice. We have a similarly clever $ySStem in Canada, but we appear to have 3 or more choices of party to vote for. Same BS, slightly different approach. Same end result.

The real alternatives are not there to vote for. The $ySStem makes sure of that by managing everything from the top down. The political parties are balanced building blocks in a single, money-controlled monolith. They play the "liberal/conservative" game to keep people mesmerized and divided against one another.