Twelve Days Out

A few humble election night predictions:

* Hillary wins the general election with an electoral vote count in the upper 300s, more than doubling Trump’s gain.

** The popular vote will be much, much closer. Clinton by less than five points.

*** And no one will be happy Wednesday morning.

I know, I know: nothing really bold about these prognostications.

Four years ago, to make the Presidential Election a little interesting for me, I promised that if Romney won, I’d read the Book of Mormon. If Obama, then I’d re-read Atlas Shrugged.

Well, we all know what happened. And I managed to get near page 800 in Rand’s doorstop before I realized life was too short, &c.

So how will I make Decision 2016 interesting?

Well, it ain’t gonna involve reading. I’m halfway through Shelby Foote’s first tome on the Civil War, 300 pages into something that’s three volumes and close to 3,000 pages in size. That’ll take me up to Easter to complete at the rate of busyness I’m experiencing. I also just finished the 955-page The Terror (review to follow shortly), and have Dicken’s David Copperfield on deck (which clocks in itself at 800-plus pages) for November. So my reading life is kinda full.

Then I figured – how ’bout making the election choose an exercise for me? I am desperate to get back into shape, for a whole host of reasons (weight, energy, and sleep problems form a few broad categories). Say Trump wins, then I start an intense alpha-dog weightlifting program. Like I did two summers ago. My energy doubled, as well as my confidence. And if Hillary wins, keeping in mind her fragile brain health and all, perhaps I should focus on yoga, stretching, and gentle aerobic activity, like a daily dawn walk.

Since I think I know how the election’ll turn out, I might be in the market for some Rodney Yee DVDs this Christmas.

But that’s not getting me jazzed up.

Then I thought about the geopolitical situation. Something that’s always intrigued me, to greater or lesser extents, throughout my life. During the rocky transitions of the leadership of the Soviet Union, from Breznev to Chernenko to Andropov to Gorbachev, in the early 80s, I read a few books on Russia as a high school nerd. Studied the language a bit (the Cyrillic alphabet fascinated me to no end), its history and geography. Might I do something again, if Trump wins, seeing he’s an alleged Putin-o-phile? And if Clinton’s our Dear Leader for the next four years, how ’bout a quick study of China, our biggest adversary in the world that you’ll never hear about on the nightly news?

Eh … I dunno.

Maybe there’s just no way to make this Election interesting.

Maybe I’ll just keep reading about the Civil War, and the greatest man to ever hold elected office, Abraham Lincoln (despite some of his dictatorial overtures), the great struggle for the soul of the nation, a nation who willing tore itself asunder and warred against itself to cleanse its body of its horrible sin.

Yes, I think that’s what I’ll be doing regardless of the outcome Tuesday twelve days out.