At last!!

 I watched each day of the Democratic convention that ushered in Tim Walz and Kamala Harris. It was such fun!

After many years, when Biden was still the most likely candidate, I had decided not to vote. Not because of Biden exactly, although it seemed obvious to me that the dear man is in trouble thanks to age and a degree of cognitive decline--at least speech-related, in other areas one doesn't know. But the reason is because I have to mail my vote into Travis County in Texas, a state that is to the right of Vlad the Impaler, a state that sends all its electoral college votes to the Republican candidate, whether he is a psychopath or felon or too ignorant to read. My expat votes only affect the president, vice-president, and senators who are running in the election. The senators are Ted Cruz, who was servile enough to tolerate the insults Trumps sent his way and whose wife Trump denigrated, and another old sagging ultraconservative who probably sleeps most of the day. The get elected again and again, thanks to the apparent death of thought in Texas except for Travis County, home of Austin, may it always be weird. Though Travis County tends to be Democratic, it is also the home of the state government, which on more than one occasion has resorted to fisticuffs. 

But now that Harris is running, I requested my ballot because I want to vote, once more, for a woman. A woman who this time may actually win. Of course, Hillary won the popular vote by some 2.9 million people, but thanks to the insanity of the electoral college, she lost the presidency. The poor founding fathers, who did not really trust the voters back in their day, established the electoral college so that the electors could overturn the popular vote if the people elected a dictator, a madman, a felon, or a weirdo. Guess what!!! Now its only purpose is to suffocate the popular vote no matter what kind of dictator, madman, felon or weirdo manages to convince enough people in swing states (whose power is absurdly antidemocratic) that he should be elected. 

My vote won't matter if Texas does its usual Back to Transylvania act, but I don't give a damn. It´s enough just to not feel stupid.