I am not trying to generalize but rather to find what Kupchan called "rift lines" or contours of main conflicting interests. The bearded one found such "rift line" in the property relations (those who own capital vs. those who own labour power). It surely was a generalization, but a fruitful one, and had a lot of explanatory power.
I am proposing that such a rift line in the US lies in the two competing weltanschauungen or world outlooks if you will - the homely, anti-intellectual, evangelical, parochial philistine vs. the urbane, cultured, cosmopolitan "city slickers." The extent of US parochialism and philistinism is nothing new - volumes have been written about it (cf. Richard Hofstadter, _Anti-Intellectualism in American Life_ : Knopf, 1963), but as far as I can tell - there are not that many attempts to use it as an explanatory factor in today's politics. Perhaps one reason is the intellectual delusion that developed since the Great Deal that holds an idealized image of "the people" as an essentially progressive force.
Far from generalizing, I argue that not every US-ser is an anti-intellectual philistine. If it were the case, there would be no rift along these lines. Elsewhere on this list I said that actually the number of such philistines has been dramatically reduced during the past 50-60 years. However, there are still many of them.
As I see it, Bush and his gang are trying to mobilize that force for their advantage - and do it quite effectively. Kerry cannot compete on this front, not even get to the same league. So the question is whether philistines will outnumber cultured cosmopolitans in the November election. Fifty or so years there would be no question that they would (Adlai Stevenson's unpopularity is a sad evidence of that) - but the fact that today it is anything but certain itself is a testimony how much the US society has changed.
So if my analysis is correct, the question who will win in November boils down to that how many philistines Bush will manage to mobilize. The intelligentsia is already mobilized against Bush and will show at the polls in great numbers - so the battle is mainly for the heart and the mind (if there is such a thing) of the yokel. A winning Democratic strategy would be to confuse them enough so they stay home in November in great numbers.
Wojtek