Mainly because it’s a female name.
I think there might be something to this. At a very base level, people like things to be appealing. “Trump”, “Clinton”, “Bush”, or “Obama”, it’s very short and to the point. “Huckabee” on the other hand, or “Klobuchar”, or “Dukakis”, these present unique challenges. In fact, that’s probably why Dukakis lost.
Schicklgruber has my vote.
He won the popular vote, but didn’t win the election; the electors chose a different candidate. Man, that sounds familiar…
Raja Krishnamoorthi is the U.S. Representative for Illinois’s 8th District (western and northwestern suburbs of Chicago). He won the office in 2016, after a couple of earlier, unsuccessful bids for office.
In his campaign ads, he’s made playful nods to how difficult his surname is to spell or pronounce, and says, “Just call me Raja.”
We had a guy named Lucer, running for county clerk ( or something) and guess what? He was a ‘loser’. A guy named Bob Smith won.
I mentioned something similar in a thread about Hickenlooper. All it takes is Trump constantly making fun of his name. His base won’t change. Dem voters might think, “Oh, man. After that embarrassment, we can’t POSSIBLY afford to have a president with a name like that!”
My Mom, many of her relatives, many of my friends parents thought Dukakis was WAAAAAY too foreign sounding for a US President. AND he was too short for the position. Of course, these people are in their 80s.
Now I don’t vote on last names, no. I certainly didn’t vote for Hillary because of her last name. But if you want the Dem base to feel confident, find a liberal US veteran who believes in equal rights, strict gun laws, progressive in stopping global warming and make sure his name is John Dwight Smith, or something close. And yes, I said “his” because the way we are right now tells me we’re not ready for a woman in the White House. (And I was convinced in 2016 it was the right time. Silly me.)
Bobby Jindal had it figured out. How can you not vote for Bobby!?
After what embarrassment? It’s not like it’s embarrassing to get made fun of by Trump.
The embarrassment of even ONE American thinking he’d be good at politics. 
“Squire Sebastian” doesn’t seem all that odd. Is “Senator” the surname? Is that the problem?
I have made the observation before that there are no complicated names when it comes to US Presidents. That is not to say that there cannot be a President Stavridis, just that to date the names have followed a pattern of being Anglo-Saxon and/or simple, strong sounding names. Obama fits the pattern because it’s easy to say and has the word bomb in it. Trump does not deserve the name because to this point a trump card is not the one you saved in case you needed something to wipe your ass with but he still fits the pattern regardless.
Someday there may be a President Queefenfart but until then it’s going to be Smith, Brown, Jones, Baker, etc.
Poppycock. The names Eisenhower, Roosevelt, Garfield, Coolidge, and Buchanan seem normal to you because they’re in your past. Van Buren doesn’t sound overly foreign for the same reason.
His first name is “Squire Sebastian Senator.” All of it. No nicknames allowed.
I suppose that “Eisenhower” sounds strong if you know what it means… but how many Americans know what it means?
And honestly, most Americans probably don’t even know that there was ever a president named “van Buren”.
This is such a strange claim. Unless I’m forgetting someone, and I don’t think I am, there have never been US Presidents named Smith, Brown, Jones, nor Baker; nor Miller, Williams, Martin (as a last name), nor Scott.
I think there was one popular but unsuccessful Presidential candidate named Smith, and a White House Chief of Staff named Baker. Those are sort of close to the Presidency, I guess?
There have been two presidents named Harrison, a couple of Johnsons, a Wilson, two Adamses, a Jackson, a Tyler, a Taylor, a Carter, and a Ford. Those seem like pretty “normal” English names. But no Joneses.
I think it does help to have a reputation already. In some alternate world, Jimmy Washington would just be a guy whose name sounded a bit like “washing done.” But George Washington was much of why the USA even existed. Five-star general Ike Eisenhower and former NY mayor and man of adventure T. Roosevelt already had reputations, maybe even myths, when they became part of national campaigns.
But absent such a reputation, does a “Jimmy Carter” really have a better shot than an “Englebert Humperdinck” or “John Hickenlooper”? I don’t see that one does.
I suspect that if there are more politicians with common names, it’s just because there are more potential candidates in the class they come from, and more persons generally, with common names. If much of the ruling class had names like St. John Marjoribanks or Moxie Crimefighter Hopeless-Savage, we’d probably see many pols with names like that!
Yes, common names are common.
Someone named Murkowski won a Senate election as a write-in candidate. Names really don’t matter.
Which is a self-chosen name, which goes to demonstrating your point: Having a memorable name is an asset. You can’t gin up any recognition, positive or negative, if people don’t remember you to begin with.
(For the record, he was born Arnold George Dorsey.)
There are multiple people with the surname Hogg who are or were in politics even aside from James Hogg, who’s in politics as an activist. Scroll down to the Politics and Government section to see people who won elections with that surname on the ballot, possibly even multiple times over.
My point is, if a name is good enough to serve you in everyday life, it’s good enough to win an election with.
Fucking robbed. :mad: Boaty McBoatface is an awesome name for a boat.