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Except a lot of people don't buy into the basic assumptions of the analogy.
For quite a few people they agree that the Red Bus goes to Town B and not anywhere near Town A. However, they don't agree that the Blue Bus goes near enough to Town A that you can walk, they just think that the Blue Bus goes to Town B, calls it Town A, and thinks you should be happy that they at least pretend to be helping you get where you want to be.
If a vote for a person or party that has zero chance of winning is a wasted vote then there are significant parts of this country where the only rational behavior is to vote Republican (or vice versa) for local office since there is zero chance of the other party winning locally. Voting for a Republican mayor in San Francisco (where Gavin Newsom is widely labeled as too conservative) is just as wasted as voting for Nader for president in 2008.
Vote for you want.
Plus, third parties don't need to have a chance to win in order to impact policy. They just need to be strong enough for one of the major parties to feel like they being weakened. At which point they'll try to absorb the issues of the fringe
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