Maybe something like “the top one only ties one arm across the tracks”? Like, you’re getting fucked, but not quite as badly?

It frustrates me that the US doesn’t have an off ramp out of this. They really need that third option (or fourth or fifth)

They really need an electoral system that makes a third or fourth or fifth option viable, like proportional representation or ranked choice of some kind. But…

there’s no realistic way to get to it electorally in a timeframe that matters.

I suspect that timeframe may be decades. You’d have to educate enough people who aren’t yet dug into " this is how we’ve always done it" about the problems of the system, convince them of a better alternative and, macabre as it may sound, wait for the old and stubborn “I don’t want to learn anything new” to die off.