Apparently, I am just another member of the liberal elite.

On Friday night my wife and I had one of our good friends over for dinner in our new apartment. We wanted to serve a meal that was casual, yet delicious, so we settled on turkey burgers from Trader Joe’s, cooked to order on our Le Creuset grill pan. We topped the burgers with provolone cheese, guacamole, sautéed mushrooms and onions, and tomatoes from the farmer’s market, and served them on whole-wheat buns.

We rounded the meal out with a spinach and arugula side salad, topped with fresh orange slices, walnuts and Parmesan shavings. Dessert was simple—home-made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

Sounds delicious, right? And yet, it’s a good thing I didn’t have Barack Obama over for dinner, because he’s run into enough trouble with arugula as it is. In July 2007, the candidate mentioned to a group of Iowa farmers that the price of the lettuce was high at Whole Foods. “Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?” Obama said. “I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff.”

Obama attempted to connect with farmers who were growing and selling arugula and thus earning more money from their crops. Instead, conservative commentators ridiculed him, claiming he was out of touch with small-town America.

Class battles have jumped to the forefront of the 2008 election in coded ways. Sarah Palin spoke at length about her roots in small-town America. “[Small-town citizens] are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America who grow our food, run our factories and fight our wars,” she said. “They love their country, in good times and bad, and they’re always proud of America. I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town.”

If Republicans have managed to stigmatize “elite,” they have also canonized “small-town,” and especially “small-town values,” even though no one is exactly sure what small-town values are.

Conservatives have identified “elite” as one of this election cycle’s slur words. Michelle Malkin has helped make arugula a synonym. After John McCain had trouble answering in August how many houses he owned, one of his spokespeople claimed Obama was a true elitist. “In terms of who’s an elitist, I think people have made a judgment that John McCain is not an arugula-eating, pointy headed professor-type based on his life story,” Brian Rogers said.

After my hoity-toity dinner on Friday, I attended a former co-worker’s barbecue on Saturday. My wife and I headed to Mission Hills in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles’ equivalent of middle America. And this was different food, indeed. Hamburgers, hot dogs and barbecued chicken. Potato salad, onion dip and Lays chips. RC Cola and pies from Ralph’s. My host was a middle-age father of three, working to feed his family during challenging economic times.

This is where Obama needs to visit the next time he swings through California, because he can’t dodge the elite label. But aren’t conservatives being just as elite by assuming “their” voters don’t know what Whole Foods is, a publicly traded company with 276 locations and more than 41,000 employees?

Would the world explode if a small-town family cooked the same meal I served last Friday? And do I suddenly become less of an elite snob if I try to replicate my co-worker’s hamburger recipe? (It was delicious and he wouldn’t tell me the ingredients to the spice rub.)

Forget turkey burgers and forget hamburgers. If Republicans continue to succeed in convincing people that Barack Obama is out of touch with small-town voters by virtue of his choice in foliage, and this indicates an inability to be a good president, then we’ll all be clamoring for our new vice-president’s favorite moose burger recipe come November 5.