Last Friday, John McCain and Sarah Palin hit the campaign trail together for the first time as an official ticket, as Palin pledged her loyalty to "small-town America" in the Republican stronghold of Cedarburg, Wisconsin, population 11,000.

That same day, the federal government released its monthly jobs report. The unemployment rate stood at 6.1%, the highest it's been in nearly five years. The American economy has lost 605,000 jobs this year. It's an economy, it bears remembering, that needs to add about 150,000 jobs each month just to keep pace with the growing workforce.

McCain's addition of Palin to the Grand Old Party ticket has stoked up the conservative base, and her rhetoric will ensure that the campaign returns to familiar attack themes about Democrats being elitists and sneering at small-town values. Meanwhile, many actual small towns are losing jobs, and the party in power has done little about it.

The party in power, of course, usually pays the price for a lousy economy. But we know also that Republicans have used the above themes successfully in recent elections. Will they work again? They just might. After all, they pack quite an emotional punch. But there are reasons to think that this time they might not. To understand why, step with me into the wayback machine.

The American cultural divide has always existed, but in its present form it dates from the 1960s, when some conservative politicians figured out how to exploit liberalism's support for minorities and other contentious causes. George Wallace, the segregationist Alabama governor, did it superbly. But no one was better at it than Richard Nixon.

As author Rick Perlstein argues in his book Nixonland, Nixon took all this personally. At his college, there was a society that dubbed itself the Franklins - well-heeled, urbane and mostly liberal. He started his own society called the Orthogonians (a Latin portmanteau meaning, basically, "straight shooters"). These were the unfashionable students, whose chief rallying tenet was resentment of the Franklins. When he attained power, Nixon did his best to divide the country into Franklins and Orthogonians. Our "blue" and "red" Americas are, in essence, these two groups.

But here's the crucial point. Not everyone is a Franklin or an Orthogonian. Indeed, most Americans aren't particularly political. They're more interested in Brangelina or the new NFL season. They vote on two bases: their instinct about the candidates and their immediate condition in life. Orthogonian rhetoric usually works well with these folks. They don't spend their lives hating liberals because they don't care enough to hate, but most of them can be persuaded that Democrats are going to raise their taxes and banish God from the public sphere, because, after all, Democrats have contempt for them and their values.

It worked for Ronald Reagan, who was running against a weak incumbent Democrat against whom a clear and comprehensive case could be made. It worked in 1988 for George HW Bush, who faced an opponent who didn't know how to stand up and fight for himself. It worked in 2000 and 2004 for George W Bush, whose opponents were easily tagged as elitist and who did nothing to fight the charge. The two times it didn't work? For Bush Sr in 1992, when he was the incumbent and the economy was bad. And for Bob Dole in 1996, when Bill Clinton was the incumbent and overseeing a strong economy.

What about this year? Something is true that has not been true in any election going all the way back to 1980. This year, 80% of Americans think the country is seriously on the wrong track. Four out of five adults. Excepting the most hardcore Bush supporters, that's pretty much every adult in the country. Sure, a smattering of that 80% thinks the country's on the wrong track because it isn't conservative enough. But the majority is concerned about the usual things: the economy, the lack of good healthcare, America's terrible standing in the world, and a host of other maladies.

The Democratic wager, then, is this: that most of the people in the vast uncommitted middle will not renew their Orthogonian membership cards. So far, the theory appears to hold water. McCain and Palin found a safely Republican town to visit in Wisconsin. But, as of today, Obama and Biden are eight points ahead in that state - a state John Kerry won by just 10,000 votes.

How will Palin, an uber-Orthogonian, play in such an atmosphere? Early polling returns are not encouraging for the GOP. In two focus groups, independents came away decidedly underwhelmed. One typical comment: "She is a cool, poised speaker, but her speech contained few statements about policy or the party platform ... I am not convinced that Palin's experience as a mayor or governor in Alaska meet the qualifications to be vice-president."

In normal times, Republicans win culture-war arguments. But these aren't normal times. The Democrats have to run a smart campaign: they must answer every attack and lodge several of their own, firmly tying McCain-Palin to the Bush-Cheney economic policy. If they do it well, a majority of independents should join the Franklin club this time.

· Michael Tomasky is editor of Guardian America michael.tomasky@theguardian.com