Eleanor Clift of Newsweek, has recently written about how vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin is reigniting the culture war as her ‘everywoman’ act plays well with audiences. She suggests that this might indicate that the GOP will try to once again paint Barack Obama as an elitist.
In her article Clift included commentary from sociologist Todd Gitlin, who spoke at a Pew Forum discussion in Washington as to whether the cultural war will have an impact come November…
, a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, speaking from the progressive side, said the culture war always matters, but that it may not be decisive, with economic issues making it harder for Republicans to get traction on lampooning as an elitist, in the way they turned John Kerry into a windsurfing Frenchman. Gitlin described the presidential election as a “quadrennial plebiscite of who we are,” with Americans casting their vote for the candidate that best embodies who we are as a nation.
Newsweek’s commentary on the vice-presidential candidates in this culture war…
Nobody wants to be an elitist. In politics, it’s a deadly label. What we saw in Thursday night’s debate were two competing strains of populism. Biden, the Irish-Catholic kid from Scranton, represents Main Street populism, the people against the powerful, anti-corporatism, little guy kitchen-table values. Palin is wooing the same working-class constituency that could decide the election in battleground states like Ohio and Pennsylvania with her pro-gun, family and religious down-to-earth values.
Read more here.
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