Sean Contacts Presidential Candidates

Virginia's Presidential primary takes place on Tuesday, March 5th. Virginia has open primaries, meaning that you show up to your polling place and simply ask for a Democratic or Republican ballot. While this generally doesn't impact the overall results, it does make things interesting. For example, in 2008, I remember some Republicans saying they would vote for Barack Obama in the primary believing he would be easier to defeat in the general election than Hillary Clinton. (I'm not sure if this is true or not since John McCain only defeated Mike Huckabee by about 45,000 votes in the 2008 Republican primary and Obama defeated Clinton by almost 300,000 votes in the Democratic primary).

So that brings us to 2024. Here are your ballots for Tuesday's primary: 

I contacted the campaigns of everyone on both the Republican and Democratic primary ballots and asked one simple question: Why should Virginians vote for you? (Or if the candidate has withdrawn, who do you support and why?)

Here are the responses:

Nothing. No one replied. Actually, I take that back. I received a "Failure Notice" that the email account I tried to reach does not exist message from Vivek Ramaswamy. I appreciate the fact that his campaign completely ended and decided to stop paying for things like email addresses.

While Sean's Ramblings isn't CNN, The Washington Post, Fox News, or any of the local news stations in the Washington, Richmond, or Virginia Beach markets, this seems like a missed opportunity for candidates to communicate directly with voters on a smaller scale. 

So where does this leave Virginia voters? My guess is that most Republicans will vote for Trump, most Democrats will vote for Biden, and others will vote for a candidate of the opposite party as a "protest" vote. And maybe candidates will want their voices heard on Sean's Ramblings in future elections! 

Remembering John McCain

One of the unique things about being at The Ohio State University is that presidential candidates often visit campus. The student population is one of the largest in the country and being in a swing state makes the campus an attractive venue for candidates to share their message. Plus, Columbus has a fairly large media market, so candidates know that they will get coverage in central Ohio and throughout the state. As a graduate student in 2000, I was able to see Al Gore, John McCain, and Carrot Top (though I don't think the latter was running for president). With McCain passing away on Saturday, this post is obviously about him.

I don't remember if McCain used the "Maverick" label at the time, and I honestly don't remember anything about the speech. It may have just been me learning more about McCain, especially his time as a POW, but I came away from his rally being impressed. He seemed more honest and genuine than many other politicians. McCain ended up losing the Republican primary to George W. Bush, and it's interesting (that's one word to use) to have seen what would have happened if McCain won the 2000 election.

In my opinion, McCain realized that he had to go more to the right to get the Republican nomination. While I don't have a specific example of this off the top of my head, it seemed like he played more to the base between 2000 and when he ran again in 2008. This time, he successfully won the nomination, but lost the general election to Barack Obama.

Over the past few years, McCain has been one of the few Republicans willing to speak out against Donald Trump, even though he ended up voting for many of his policies. I'm actually not sure if I admire McCain or not for not stooping to Trump's level after the ridiculous statement that “[McCain] was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” While I disagree with many of his politics, I admire McCain for his service and being one of the seemingly few politicians willing to work with Senators and members of Congress from the opposing party. McCain dedicated his life to the United States and deserves respect and appreciation for this.

RIP Senator.


Photo from JohnMcCain.com.

Proof that McCain spoke at Ohio State on February 26, 2000 courtesy of The Lantern.

Update: Drew Magary of GQ has some thoughts on McCain that is worth checking out.

Notes From Tucson

I spent the past few days in Tucson, Arizona, so I thought I would share my thoughts about the trip.

- Everyone said that even though Tucson would be hot, it would be a dry heat. Well, there was actually some humidity since it is Monsoon season. There's also a southern Arizona city named Dragoon, so yes, there was a monsoon in Dragoon.

- Why do flight attendants feel the need to announce that flights are very full? Is there really a difference between a full flight and a very full flight? If every seat is taken, it is a full flight. In my opinion, the only way it would be a very full flight is if they seated passengers in the bathroom or the aisle.

- I visited Old Tucson Studios where countless Westerns such as The Outlaw Josey Wales, Gunfight at the OK Corral, Rio Bravo, McClintock!, Tombstone, and The Three Amigos were filmed. Nearly every Hollywood legend including Clint Eastwood, James Stewart, John Wayne, Dean Martin, Angie Dickinson and Kirk Douglas worked there.



However, the tour guide did not mention one very special project filmed at Old Tucson Studios. A two-part episode of Webster where "the Papadapolises visit Lizard Flatz, Arizona and encounter Dusty, a man with interesting stories, a ranch, and Moonhunter, a horse that seems to be a legend, but ends up a reality after saving Webster from a rattlesnake. Moonhunter gets caught by some greedy no-gooders, and Webster almost gets killed. George wants to live on the ranch, Webster wants to save Moonhunter and set him free, but after all the excitement, they decide to head back to Chicago." I don't remember this episode.

- According to a billboard on I-10, John McCain is "Fighting for a Secure Border." There was no footage of the Senator standing in Nogales actually fighting.

- There were several roads with separate speed limits for the day and the night. How is this enforced? Is night considered the exact sunset time, when there are three stars in the sky, or some other method?

- There is a giant "A" on a Tucson mountain for the University of Arizona. Which came first, Arizona's A or BYU's Y on a Provo mountain?

- Sadly, I did not eat at In-N-Out, Waffle House or Little Caesars, three restaurants that don't seem to be anywhere near Washington DC.

- I read and heard that there are between 900,000 and 1 million residents of Tucson. There are definitely 1 million cacti (cactuses?), but I have no idea where all of these people are. Maybe they're all away for the summer or are hiding in fear of fighting John McCain.

Election Maps, Steelers and Great Authors

My life the last few days has focused almost entirely on the election and the Steelers’ Monday night game, though not necessarily in that order. I have a few links about both:

I love maps and have spent way too much time looking at the county-by-county results of the Presidential election.

From the map, only one county in the six New England states went to McCain: Piscataquis, Maine.

Conversely, McCain won every Oklahoma county, and Obama only won two counties each in Wyoming and Utah and three counties in Kansas and Nevada. Of course, winning Clark County, home of Las Vegas, was enough for Obama to carry that state.

McCain also won both Mineral counties. That would be Mineral County, Nevada where 49 total people voted and Mineral County, Colorado which had a whopping 64 voters. I spent over 20 minutes trying to verify these numbers from the Mineral County government websites, but I don’t think these counties have actual websites.

According to the Pennsylvania map from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, John McCain won Mercer County with 24,321 votes versus Obama’s 24,319. That’s a difference of only two votes. Amazing! However, the Mercer County government site actually shows that Obama won 24,955-24,792. Did they find an extra thousand people at the Grove City Prime Outlets to vote late Tuesday night?

There are a lot of angry Redskins fans in and around Washington. It’s not the team lost handily to Pittsburgh on Monday night; it’s the fact that there were thousands of Steelers fans in attendance. Personally, I thought there were a larger percentage of Steelers fans at the game I attended in Jacksonville earlier this season (I thought about 25%) than at Monday’s game, but I have seen some people put the percentage of Steelers fans on Monday as high as 30%. Much more about this as well as some fun comments from Washington fans on the DC Sports Bog here, here and here (this one is the Redskins player reactions to the Steelers fans. The offense needed to use a silent count...at home!).

In other Steelers news (sort of), PSAMP and One for the Other Thumb interviewed Amos Zereoue.

Finally, I am always on the lookout for good books to read. While I am enjoying Don’t Know Much About Anything Else by Kenneth C. Davis (I like receiving free books), which has facts and quizzes on a variety of topics, there is not a plot or protagonist. Therefore, I am thinking about reading some books by historic authors. If you could choose one book each by Ernest Hemmingway, Charles Dickens and John Steinbeck, what would you recommend? I remember reading Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck in high school, and I must have read a Dickens book at some point, but I don’t recall which one. Any suggestions of books by these authors or others are appreciated.

I Voted - Go Steelers

Thanks to early voting in Virginia, I cast my ballot last week. Therefore, to all political candidates in the Washington DC area, you can stop trying to convince me to vote for you. You can continue to show your television advertisements while I’m watching football, but I don’t need to look. Show Chris Berman interviewing Obama and McCain during halftime of Monday night football; I don’t care. I’m not going to watch it as I’ll be at FedEx Field. I just hope that the Redskins don’t show these interviews at the stadium.

Monday night’s game is the reason why I voted early. I won’t get home from the game until early Tuesday morning, so trying to wake up, wait over an hour in line to vote and then get to work at a reasonable hour just wasn’t going to happen.

One surprising name on the presidential ballot was a Wayne A. Root, the Vice Presidential candidate on the Libertarian ticket. Without knowing this individual, I wondered if it was Wayne Allyn Root, the Vegas sports handicapper who I used to hear commercials for on sports talk radio. As it turns out, Wayne Allyn Root IS running for Vice President. Who knew?

Finally, I need some advice on my attire for Monday night’s game. I have a heavy Steelers jacket as well as my Louis Lipps jersey. The team has won in games I attended when I wear one or the other, but I have never attempted to wear both at the same time. The temperature is expected to be around 50. Any suggestions are appreciated, as I know that my wardrobe, and not factors such as Jason Campbell or the Steelers offensive line, will determine whether or not the Steelers will win. If you have any doubt in my power, the last time the Steelers lost in a game I attended was the AFC Championship game against San Diego in January 1995.

Obama Food vs. McCain Food

Although the Presidential election is still a few days away, some businesses, such as the three below, want to get into the action with their own election.

Visit your local 7-Eleven for the 7-Election (get it? 7-election instead of 7-11? clever) and place your vote by choosing either an Obama or a McCain cup of coffee. The website even has state by state results, although many "red" states have no 7-Eleven stores operated or franchised by 7-Eleven Inc.

If there's any post about food on this site, California Tortilla generally gets mentioned. In this case, California Tortilla is tallying the number of each of the candidate’s burritos sold from October 13th through November 3rd and they guarantee that whosever burrito sells the most will win the election.

The McCain-Chilada: Mexican rice, mesquite chicken, tortilla strips, velvety queso, fresh salsa, and shredded lettuce, rolled in a warm flour tortilla, smothered with green enchilada sauce and garnished with sour cream and cilantro.

The O-Chili-bama Burrito: Mexican rice, turkey chili, tortilla strips, jalapeño peppers, sour cream, and shredded lettuce, rolled in a warm flour tortilla, smothered with velvety queso and garnished with fresh salsa and green onions.

Now through, well, today, cast your ballot by ordering one of the special election omelettes at Silver Diner. The Obamalette (inspired by the candidate’s favorite hometown food, Chicago deep dish pizza – a pizza omelette?) vs. the McCainlette (indicative of the candidate’s home state of Arizona, as well as his favorite way to cook, Barbecue).

I’m sure there are more of these McCain-Obama food and drink election deals out there, but I couldn’t find any others. If you type Obama vs. McCain into Google, there are 31,900,000 results. I only got through about 13,154,120 before I gave up. If you know of any places doing this, feel free to share in the comments section.


Only five days until this is all over!

Republicans Should Fear Eli Manning and Jason Campbell

After switching around from the Washington Redskins preseason game to the South Carolina-North Carolina State college football game, I turned to the Democratic National Convention to watch Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. Besides wanting to see his speech, the preseason game ended and I didn’t have that much interest in this particular college football game (particularly since South Carolina was winning big).

However, this got me thinking about next week. The Republican National Convention will end next Thursday night with John McCain’s acceptance speech. Next Thursday night also marks the beginning of the NFL season as the Washington Redskins face the New York Giants, a game that a millions of people care about as opposed to last night's games. Although the NFL and NBC moved the game to a 7:00pm Eastern Time start so it won't conflict with the speech, I think the Republican Party should be worried about the game exceeding three hours. If it is a close game after 10:00, there will be millions and millions of people who will stay with the game and not switch to see McCain’s speech. If that's the case, what will NBC do? They probably won't want to alienate viewers by switching away from the game and going to the convention (that worked so well with the Heidi game 40 years ago). What will the Republicans do? Will they delay the speech until the game ends? Will the NFL try to encourage coaches Jim Zorn and Tom Coughlin not to challenge plays to save time? Will NBC try to speed things along by showing fewer commercials? (That’s funny!) I guess the Republican Party should hope that both Manning and Campbell have excellent games with few incompletion passes so that the clock continues to move.

Let all of the conspiracy theories (both political and football) begin!

Life Without the Internet

From Monday at 11:00am until Wednesday at 10:00pm, something was missing in my life. That something was internet access. I wasn’t in the remote wilderness; I was in New York City. I even had a computer, although I could not justify paying $17.95 a night for internet access in my hotel room. I even considered paying $8 for internet access at LaGuardia airport (cheers again to Albuquerque Airport for having free wireless internet), but I didn’t think it was worth it. Instead, I had to learn about what was going on in the world through the USA Today and the limited time I had in my hotel room watching TV.

Over the last few days, my life has been incomplete. I couldn’t check my e-mail or visit my usual website for news and information including the Post-Gazette, Washington Post, Deadspin and Google Reader. For example, I didn’t know that Sidney Crosby returned to the Penguins until after the game ended. I couldn’t see if people had excellent best man speech ideas for me based on Monday morning’s post. I did not learn about Brett Favre’s retirement until many hours after the announcement. I also didn’t know that Lindsey Lohan’s mother and sister were going to be on an E! show titled Living Lohan.

Now that I’m home, things seem right. I can see how many people visited my blog (only folks searching for "why I hate Hillary Clinton" on Google); I can read other blogs again (OK, I haven’t done this yet); I can check my bank account balance (an extra $1000 did not magically appear); and I can read my e-mail again (I received mostly spam messages and junk mail). Actually, I did receive the following eight news alerts from The Washington Post within a 24-hour period:

Inside Decision Tuesday
Obama & McCain Win Vermont
McCain Wins Ohio
Clinton Wins Rhode Island
McCain Wins GOP Nomination
Clinton Wins Ohio
Clinton Wins Texas
Bush, McCain at White House

So McCain winning Texas wasn’t important? Why wasn’t there a news alert about Ben Roethlisberger’s $102 million contract? It doesn’t matter now since I can find everything that I need from the comfort of my home and office.

Get Away From My Office

Perhaps you have heard about John McCain’s relationship, or lack thereof, with lobbyist Vicki Iseman. I personally don’t care about the story and feel like it has already received way more attention that it deserves. I guess sex or the potential of sex sells.

Anyway, when I arrived at work today, I noticed two cameras on tripods outside my building. There was a gentleman crossing the street that I thought they were filming for some strange reason. When I went out for lunch, there were about four or five cameras on the corner. There were two or three cameras at the same place when I went home. It turns out that, apparently, Ms. Iseman works in the building across the street. Therefore, about a half dozen cameras stayed outside the building hoping to get film of Ms. Iseman. I imagine that they were hoping that she would need to buy some medicine at CVS or grab lunch at COSI or California Tortilla. What a thrilling day for these guys to stand in the cold on an Arlington, Virginia corner for 8+ hours! I wonder if they’ll be back on Friday if we get the snowstorm that is expected.

Thoughts on the 2008 Presidential Election

Just before the Iowa caucus (doesn’t that seem like years ago?) I posed a question to Rob at Bluey Blog as to why people hate Hillary Clinton. This led to probably the most comments I have ever received (that doesn’t really say much) and inspired another post about Clinton at the landmark site, Smart Bitches. (I am being completely serious about this statement; SB discovered that a major author plagiarized material in her books, and the site was referenced in stories by the AP, New York Times and Newsweek. Conversely, Sean’s Ramblings has been mentioned on Star Trek and WVU fan message boards.)

Anyway, I check out Bluey Blog occasionally and was extremely surprised to discover that Bluey voted for Barack Obama in Tuesday’s primary. You see, Rob is the director of the Center for Media & Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation, serves as a contributor to a prominent conservative blog, writes weekly columns for sites including The Conservative Voice and is a contributing editor to Human Events, the national conservative weekly. These are not quite the credentials of Dennis Kucinich. So why the heck did Rob vote for Obama? He gave a few reasons including that he’ll "do whatever it takes to avoid another Clinton in the White House, even if it means crossing over to vote in the Democrat primary." He also stated that

[Obama’s] lack of experience makes him even more vulnerable. It is for this reason that I would give McCain the edge in a head-to-head matchup with Obama. I’m not so sure the same is true against Hillary.

I don’t buy that second theory and here’s why. As I lifetime Democrat, I openly wonder who I would vote for if it came down to Clinton vs. McCain. This has less to do with politics than it does the people themselves. I really liked McCain when he ran in 2000, and although he seems to be criticized heavily by Rush & Coulter (more on them momentarily), he stands by his convictions and has sincerely worked with his Democratic Senate colleagues on some controversial topics for folks on the right such as campaign finance reform. I don’t agree with McCain on a lot of issues, and I think he’s changed significantly since 2000, but I think he is an honorable person. Actually, just the fact that Rush and Coulter seem to dislike McCain right now as much as Clinton is a reason for me to like him. By the way, is there anything more asinine than Ann Coulter being anti-McCain because he’s against torture? Hello, McCain was a POW who was tortured. I’ll take his opinions on torture over just about anyone. Folks like Rush and Coulter will end up coming around on McCain as they’re not going to vote or support Clinton or Obama. However, if Clinton does get the nomination or even elected, that's great business for them. Think about it: four plus years of high ratings in criticizing Clinton. The ratings and listeners won't be nearly as big if McCain wins.

Back to Hillary, while I would tend to agree with her on most issues, I think she would have an extremely difficult time working with Congress and getting the support of a large majority of the American public. There are just so many people out there that hate her and that's not going to change. As an aside, I would love to see Bill Clinton as the first man. I think he would do a fantastic job as an ambassador to the world traveling from country to country. Could Bill serve in this role during the entire term and only return to the U.S. for holidays?

As mentioned above, Rob gave McCain the edge against Obama. I don’t buy it. The knock against Obama is his inexperience and that may be valid. However, he can put good people around him. (Bill Richardson as anything would be great. How about Al Gore for Secretary of the Interior?) More importantly Obama is inspiring. I think it’s fair to write that there has not been so much hope for/by a presidential candidate since JFK or Reagan depending on your political views. I also don’t think you can discount age. The youth vote would certainly migrate towards Obama (born in August 1961) over McCain (born in August 1936).

So what do you think? If this is too deep, you can always go over to Kissing Suzy Kolber who wrote a post titled Vote for Barack Obama And Receive A “Get Out Of Racism Free” Card.

This entire post may be too deep for me too. I’m going to play Madden now.

Election Day Parties and Events

Tuesday is the Potomac Primary/Chesapeake Primary/whatever you want to call it where voters in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia go to the polls to vote in the Presidential Primary. What to do once you cast your ballot? Well, here are some suggestions for the rest of the day.

- California Tortilla is giving customers a free taco. Just stop by your local DC, MD or VA's Cal Tort on Tuesday, February 12th proudly wearing your “I VOTED” sticker or with your sample ballot, and they will give you a free taco.

- IHOP’s National Pancake Day Celebration - From 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., IHOP will give you a free short stack (three) buttermilk pancakes. All that they ask is that you consider making a donation to support locale children’s hospitals through Children’s Miracle Network, or other local charities. This really has nothing to do with the election, but it’s free food!

- Obama fans? Watch the DC/Virginia/Maryland results come in at James Hoban's in Dupont Circle on Tuesday, February 12th. They promise good company, good drink/food specials, and good results for Obama. In return, they’re asking for a minimum donation of $25 per person, all of which will go directly to the campaign.

- Come out to show your support for Senator Obama with the gay and lesbian community as they watch the primaries for the DC, VA & MD at Nellie’s Sports Bar in DC.

- McCain fans? The Virginia Election Night Party takes place at the Holiday Inn Hotel & Suites in Alexandria. Will John McCain be there?

- Nothing says election night like Drag Bingo at Chaos.

- Al Jarreau performs at the Birchmere, but tickets are sold out. You may have better luck with Disney’s High School Musical at the National Theatre.

- Don’t Spend a Dime has a list of free food and drinks (again, not election-related, but free food!)

- Koji Kakinuma is at The Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage at 6. It’s a free show, but I doubt that Kakinuma will have much election analysis (since the polls haven’t closed yet, of course).

I could not find any election evening events for Hilary Clinton, Mike Huckabee or Ron Paul, but I’m sure there has to be something. If you know of any other events or discounts for Tuesday, please leave them in the comments. Oh yeah, don’t forget to vote!