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.
Option 2: One hundred thousand fans hear of this mispronunciation, half of them are undecided voters, and ten percent of the undecided voters decide to change their vote based on this one incident, completely reinforcing the idea that Obama is an out-of-touch elitist since he doesn't exactly know every sports team's name in the country.
