Who said “things are good actually”?? Seems to me that Harris had plenty of policy proposals that would have resulted in a meaningful improvement to the bottom line of the average American.
Biden has also been better for the average American than trump was. For fucks sake, Trump actually got away with raising taxes on all of us to support his tax cut for the rich, simply because the average person is too low information to grasp the idea of a tax cut that expires!
So yeah, plenty of actual reasons to say that one candidate is better than the other, without needing to be wowed by an actual messiah who can dismantle our fucked up system and solve everybody’s problems.
It would seem to do that, yes. You don’t even have to be abroad, as you could easily be stationed in a different state from your “home” residence.
This has no effect on federal elections of course, and so I think it’s not that unreasonable to say that you only get to vote on local issues if you are living locally.