Because of Mikey and his sister Ronalie, and because I’ve often liked many Democratic ideas about helping families and communities, I usually found myself leaning their way – even while noticing some surprising strengths in Trump in 2020.

My mistake was letting my worries about Sri Lanka and the region color how I saw Kamala and the ticket, instead of slowing down and gently checking those feelings and facts more carefully.

I’ve also noticed I tend to cheer for politicians I like as people more than the ones whose plans I’ve actually read, and that’s not a very good habit if I want to be wise over the long run.

In that mood I ended up turning Kamala, in my own head, into an ███████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████. Looking back, I can see that picture says more about my own worries and anger than it does about her or the people who vote for her.