It certainly can seem like that, but the biggest problem is our voting system makes it work like that.

With a winner takes all voting system, and only two effective parties in power, everyone is basically stuck with “horrible monster who wants to kill everything in know and love” and “someone close to what I want kinda”.

So people tend to vote among party lines because that’s all they can do.

For example, where I live, both candidates have been anti trans. One’s way worse about it and the other is, in my opinion, probably just saying some rhetoric to try to appeal to some voting base she normally can’t reach. So I am going to have to choose the lesser of two evils, because the person running against her is from a party that actively wants to exterminate trans people, even though the other candidate sucks.

In short, Americans don’t vote for, they vote against.