OT: a little theory on candidates' names

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mack 18 years ago

I notice that in our history, we've never had a president with a very ethnic name, nor one with a highly unusual name. The only 'ethnic' name exception was Kennedy, and with over 10% of our population having an Irish background, it's hardly ethnic anymore. Then there were two Roosevelts, of Dutch extraction. Granted, a very unusual name.

OK, back to basics. Whenever there's a competition between a person with a familiar name and one with an unusual name, the familiar named person is almost always the winner. and people with unusual names ...Dukakis, Goldwater, Obama, Giuliani, Kucinich, etc are usually the losers. Do you think voters just feel more comfortable with a familiar name and thus vote for the common names rather than the uncommon? Just wondering. What are your ideas?

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JoeSpareBedroom 18 years ago

The public seems to have issues with certain ethnicities. This is why Mario Cuomo bowed out of his early presidential ambitions, if I recall. You know them Italians. They're all "connected".

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badgolferman 18 years ago

Schwarzenegger. Maybe it's not the name but the PR machine that matters.

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mack 18 years ago

Ah, true, but that's still state politics. Like Voinovich and lots of uncommon names get elected in individual states, especially where there are many hyphenated Americans. (I was surprised to find that the census tells us over 15 % of Americans are of German heritage). But in national politics, I have to think that an ethnic or unusual name is a handicap for a candidate. I wonder whether "Barack" and "Obama" isn't a double handicap. Someone with his name may have a chance nowadays, but half a century ago and more, he'd have sunk beneath the waves before he got to first base (to mix metaphors.) Going back to Ahnold...before him we had a guy named Deukmejian (who was such a nonentity that I just had to google his name to spell it properly.)

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larry moe 'n curly 18 years ago

I think it's mostly the attitude of the power establishment. While bigotry has mostly vanished in the US, it's still highly prevalent among upper-income Protestants, who are very protective of their power status, and anyone who's worked at a country club for a summer has experienced how freely those people spew their polite bigotry among themselves and even to the help.

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Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute 18 years ago

In message news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com, mack sprach forth the following:

Dukakis and Goldwater won several elections, including their parties' primaries.

Giuliani beat a guy named Green.

Kucinich wins his congressional races because his district is gerrymandered, but he won a mayor's race.

Obama is simply the luckiest man in America - having had BOTH his primary and general election opponents beset by scandal.

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mack 18 years ago

I disagree. Sure, there's lots of bigotry among the country club fat cats, but just as much in every beer bar and shack where the obligatory seven dogs lie under the front porch. Bigotry doesn't know socioeconomic classes...it's an equal opportunity evil. But I have a hunch it's getting better in many places, compared to the past, when being a member of a religion or ethnic group that the boss didn't care for was grounds for dismissal.

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larry moe 'n curly 18 years ago

One summer, I worked at a country club (nowhere near the country but in the middle of the city, ironically), and I heard a lot more bigoted remarks from its members than from the general public, and probably every hispanic employee there had heard that he spoke well for a foreigner. Wealthy people in America are much more likely than average to be WASPs, and they probably have less contact than most people do with other ethnic groups as social equals, unless they go overseas.

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