Just start with Linux mint and cinnamon or kde desktop environment. You should be good to go with that. Kernels are not something that you usually need to worry about, the default should work fine. If you need to, it’s easy to switch to another kernel by just installing it through the package manager.
Pod save America talked about this in a recent episode. There’s always a balance in the timing of these things. If you drip feed the endorsements, people might become used to it and not care. If many very famous people do their endorsements close to Election Day, it might motivate voters to actually go and vote. That’s one of the ways that those running the campaign might reason.