LMAO Obama Calls Penn State The "Nittaly Lions"!!!!!!

[Nym90]

Almost as bad as Kerry ordering a Philly cheese steak with Swiss cheese.

Candidates who make those kinds of mistakes could never win PA.

[Nym90]

I don't understand. Could someone explain this to me?

Nittany Lions = correct.  Nittaly Lions = incorrect.

This is of roughly the same order of magnitude as Kerry's calling the Green Bay Packers' Lambeau Field "Lambert Field" (like the St. Louis airport) in 2004.

IIRC, he lost the state.

I knew the son of the  Chairman of Cambria County GOP Committee in 1964.  He vividly remembered his mother telling Nelson Rockefeller to pronounce the name of the county the way the locals do, so that "Cam" (short "a") rhymes with "jam," not "Cam" (long "a"), rhymes with "lame."  To do it would have cost him votes in the county.

I saw Dwight Evans make a similar mistake in the Democratic gubernatorial primary debate in 1994, except he called it "Cambridge County."

Too bad you don't RC.

[Nym90]

I don't understand. Could someone explain this to me?

Nittany Lions = correct.  Nittaly Lions = incorrect.

This is of roughly the same order of magnitude as Kerry's calling the Green Bay Packers' Lambeau Field "Lambert Field" (like the St. Louis airport) in 2004.

IIRC, he lost the state.

I knew the son of the  Chairman of Cambria County GOP Committee in 1964.  He vividly remembered his mother telling Nelson Rockefeller to pronounce the name of the county the way the locals do, so that "Cam" (short "a") rhymes with "jam," not "Cam" (long "a"), rhymes with "lame."  To do it would have cost him votes in the county.

I saw Dwight Evans make a similar mistake in the Democratic gubernatorial primary debate in 1994, except he called it "Cambridge County."

Too bad you don't RC.

RC?

You said IIRC, which stands for If I Recall Correctly.

[Nym90]

I don't understand. Could someone explain this to me?

Nittany Lions = correct.  Nittaly Lions = incorrect.

This is of roughly the same order of magnitude as Kerry's calling the Green Bay Packers' Lambeau Field "Lambert Field" (like the St. Louis airport) in 2004.

IIRC, he lost the state.

I knew the son of the  Chairman of Cambria County GOP Committee in 1964.  He vividly remembered his mother telling Nelson Rockefeller to pronounce the name of the county the way the locals do, so that "Cam" (short "a") rhymes with "jam," not "Cam" (long "a"), rhymes with "lame."  To do it would have cost him votes in the county.

I saw Dwight Evans make a similar mistake in the Democratic gubernatorial primary debate in 1994, except he called it "Cambridge County."

Too bad you don't RC.

RC?

You said IIRC, which stands for If I Recall Correctly.

There's no doubt in my mind that Bush was the true winner of Wisconsin.  There were mass reports across that state on Election Day '04 of GOP headquarters getting broken into and all their "get out the vote" lists destroyed/stolen and hundreds of Republican-sponsored elderly transportation vans having their tires slashed.  IMO, statewide there were probably at least 12,000 votes lost from those tampering attempts.

Then the Republicans should've pursued it and prosecuted it. If they didn't, that to me is pretty strong evidence that it either didn't happen or at the very least wouldn't have swung the state (at least, not after also factoring in Republican fraud).

Not saying that your assumption isn't true, but I believe in innocent until proven guilty, and would say the same about arguments that Ohio 2004 or Florida 2000 was stolen as well (I don't think Florida was stolen, but I think that the intent of the majority of voters who cast ballots was clearly for Gore, with ballot snafus causing the official result to reflect otherwise).

[Nym90]

Well, Bush referred to the "Iron Range" in 2004 as the "Iron Ridge" on a campaign stop in Duluth.

That didn't go over too well... but they were gonna vote for Kerry by a 2-to-1 margin anyway.

In 1992 Bush the elder participated in the annual Mackinac Bridge walk on Labor Day and referred to how the Bridge connects the US and Canada.

[Nym90]

Anyone else agree with JJ that slightly mispronouncing part of a local sports team's name will result in "a few thousand" voters switching from Obama to McCain?

To me, that's one of the most ridiculous things I've heard on the forum in weeks.  How many Penn State fans will even be made aware of this mispronunciation?  And what percent of those that know are undecided?  And what percent of undecided voters will make their decision purely based on this statement?

I think we're looking at 5-6 voters, realistically.

Agreed. Almost as ridiculous as calling Pennsylvania a tossup when McCain hasn't led in a single poll there since April.

[Nym90]

Anyone else agree with JJ that slightly mispronouncing part of a local sports team's name will result in "a few thousand" voters switching from Obama to McCain?

To me, that's one of the most ridiculous things I've heard on the forum in weeks.  How many Penn State fans will even be made aware of this mispronunciation?  And what percent of those that know are undecided?  And what percent of undecided voters will make their decision purely based on this statement?

I think we're looking at 5-6 voters, realistically.

Agreed. Almost as ridiculous as calling Pennsylvania a tossup when McCain hasn't led in a single poll there since April.

QFT

What does quantum Fourier transform have to do with anything?

(hopefully Muon and jfern are reading this thread)

[Nym90]

Anyone else agree with JJ that slightly mispronouncing part of a local sports team's name will result in "a few thousand" voters switching from Obama to McCain?

To me, that's one of the most ridiculous things I've heard on the forum in weeks.  How many Penn State fans will even be made aware of this mispronunciation?  And what percent of those that know are undecided?  And what percent of undecided voters will make their decision purely based on this statement?

I think we're looking at 5-6 voters, realistically.

Agreed. Almost as ridiculous as calling Pennsylvania a tossup when McCain hasn't led in a single poll there since April.

QFT

In seriousness though, if McCain does win PA, I'll be the first to give you and Keystone Phil major props.

[Nym90]

Anyone else agree with JJ that slightly mispronouncing part of a local sports team's name will result in "a few thousand" voters switching from Obama to McCain?

To me, that's one of the most ridiculous things I've heard on the forum in weeks.  How many Penn State fans will even be made aware of this mispronunciation?  And what percent of those that know are undecided?  And what percent of undecided voters will make their decision purely based on this statement?

I think we're looking at 5-6 voters, realistically.

Dream on.  It reinforces the "Obama is an elitist," "Obama is out of touch," "Obama isn't one of 'us,'" perceptions.  If he'd mispronounced "pizza" or "subliminal," it wouldn't have made a difference.  This does, in the worst place it could.  It's not a lot, and a few thousand votes isn't a lot, but sure didn't help.

What sounds more like a dream?

Option 1: This slight slip of a sports team name will not be common knowledge and only a small fraction of fans will know of it.  Of these, only a slight fraction will be swing voters.  Of these, only a small fraction will vote for McCain when they would have otherwise voted for Obama, completely based on this mispronunciation.  JJ is projecting his own beliefs onto the electorate as a whole.

Hardly.  We have 400,000+ alumni and possibly 75, 000-150,000 die hard fans, figure 500,000.  Maybe 2/3 live in the state, 330,000.   Figure half will hear about it (already 180 hits for it on Google), which might be low depending on the play in Central PA media, 115,000.  figure of those 80,000 are registered, and it makes a difference in just 1%, that's 800 votes.  I frankly think those numbers are low.  

In stead of fans, we local people that know the team name as a brand name (I'm one of them) and think that Obama's faking it to try to sound local when he gets it wrong.  It that area, probably another 300,000-600,000 voters.  Take that figure down as above, you probably have another 600-800 voters.

It's not a lot, but it isn't 5-6 voters either.

It's not 100,000 voters, but probably 1000-2000.  Not enough to swing the state, but it's those little things that all add up.

Sounds about right. Of course, 1000-2000 votes probably get swayed by every single speech McCain or Obama give on the stump, too. At least.

[Nym90]

Obama is an elitist for mispronouncing a team name?

I suppose Bush is the most elitist politician ever then.

I wouldn't disagree that Bush is, actually (of course not for that reason).

[Nym90]

Almost as bad as Kerry ordering a Philly cheese steak with Swiss cheese.

Candidates who make those kinds of mistakes could never win PA.

Haha, yeah. What an elitist. 

The Manny Ortiz thing was the best though especially since this person was supposed to be his favorite player.

That's not that uncommon for people of that age to misspeak, though. My dad's favorite football player is someone he commonly would mistakenly call "Brett Starr", combining his first name with his formerly favorite player's last name.

[Nym90]

Im offended...really Iam.

but....what?

I think there is a good possibility that Obama will lose the white working class vote.

I think Obama may not connect with the white working class.  I think he had some problems in primary with that demographic.  He wouldn't be the first Democrat to have that problem.

It depends on how "working class" is defined, of course, but by most measures no Democrat has won that demographic since Johnson in 1964. So yes, I would agree that Obama probably won't win them overall, either.

I also remain unconvinced he'll do worse with them than the effete elitist windsurfing French speaking flip-flopping most liberal member of the Senate from the most liberal state in the country that we nominated in 2004.