This year's presidential election will be "the Gettsyburg of the American cultural wars" — and the country will "never be the same," journalist and author Carl Bernstein says.
After inaugurating a Twitter account Tuesday, the Watergate investigative reporter and author of
"A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Clinton," took part in a
question-and-answer session on Periscope TV to analyze the White House candidates.
"This is really the Gettysburg of the American cultural wars of the last 30 years," Bernstein said during the session,
Politico reports.
"Whoever wins the country — it's going to never be the same, and it's going to determine the future of our country for generations."
Donald Trump, he asserted, has an "unerring sense of the grievances of so many American peoples," including declining wages, aging infrastructures and the out-sized power of the elite class.
"He comes from a tradition of demagoguery in our country, and never has a demagogue reached this point in our electoral system before," Bernstein said.
As for Clinton, "since her Arkansas days" she's "had a difficult relationship with the truth," he said, describing her as in the "cross hairs" of the culture wars.
"She is tenacious, she is able, she stands for certain things that she has not wavered from," Bernstein said. "Regardless of whether she wins or not, she has made it possible for a woman to be president of the United States."
But, he said, she "has not been able to represent herself as a whole, sympathetic person" up until the positive remarks made Monday night about her at the Democratic National Convention
by First Lady Michelle Obama and primary rival Sen. Bernie Sanders, Bernstein notes.
"Either she can do for herself what they're now doing, or she'll lose," Bernstein said. "She has to define herself now in the terms that the people who know her best have finally presented."
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