I Voted. Meh.

Everyone is talking about how enthusiastic they are to vote.  Not me.  I'm not enthusiastic at all.  I can't remember the last time I was enthusiastic, though I'm sure it was some time in this century.  (I was enthusiastic about Martin O'Malley's 2016 presidential campaign, but as I don't live in Iowa, I never got to vote for him.)

Anyway, I voted, now that early voting has started in New Jersey, and to be honest, my congresswoman, Representative Analilia Mejia (D-NJ-11), a former Bernie Sanders staffer, was the only person I voted for with any interest or excitement.  Cory Booker was up for re-election to the Senate, and while I can remember when there was a time when it was easy to get excited about Cory Booker - about twenty years ago, when he was first elected mayor of Newark - but these days, getting excited over Cory Booker (below) is like getting excited over straw.  Ditto Essex County (NJ) Executive Joseph DiVincenzo, who is running for his seventh - seventh! - four-year term.

Though there were twelve offices up for election on my local ballot - including members of the Essex County Board of Commissioners - I did not vote for mayor or two council members in my town or school board member because it didn't matter.   In all of these cases, except for school board member, the Republicans fielded candidates but there was no Democratic opposition on the ballot.  The school board election had one candidate for the sole seat at stake, but that's a nonpartisan election with a single nomination by petition.)  Also, the local Republicans made sure that the candidates now on the general election ballot ran in the primary election unopposed.  Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was a resident of my town when he was a federal judge in Newark, and expanding how local elections are run here to the entire country is his biggest wet dream.  

Secession?  So long as we have in New Jersey burgs like mine, my hope of New Jersey withdrawing from the Union is more a of pipedream.  And though I think it can happen, I'm all wet.