Goodbye, Soccer Mom. Hello, Security Mom

[The Finman]

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<h2><font color=#003399></font>Goodbye, Soccer Mom. Hello, Security Mom</h2>
She's worried, she wants answers and she likes toughness in a President.

Here's how Swing voters have always been elusive creatures, changing shape from election to election.

Since 9/11, polls suggest she has morphed into Security Mom --- and that development is frightening to Democrats, who have come to count on women to win elections.

She's someone, in short, like Debbie Creighton, a 34-year-old Santee, Calif., mother of two who voted for Bill Clinton twice and used to choose the candidates who were most liberal on abortion and welfare.

Jillian Kelly, a 43-year-old single mother and owner of a Chicago-area massage-therapy business, used to consider the Homeland Security Department "a joke."

Netaya Anbar, a 45-year-old Pelham, N.Y., mother of three and still an avowed Democrat, worries about the erosion of civil liberties but at the same time recognizes that it could protect her family.

Nancy Potter, a 52-year-old teacher in Murfreesboro, Tenn., did not vote for George Bush and still thinks he stole the election from Al Gore.

President Bush's top political adviser Karl Rove believes a shift among women with children under 18 was a major factor in the G.O.P.'s historic victory in last year's midterms, in which the President became the first Republican in a century to see his party gain seats in an off-year election.

One result was that women's support for defense spending -- even for expensive, untried concepts like a missile-defense system -- shot up to levels roughly equal with men's.

In last week's TIME/CNN poll, for instance, a healthy majority of men said they were more fearful about an economic downturn than another terrorist attack (56% to 37%); women, on the other hand, were marginally more worried about terrorism (47% to 43%).

"The economy has me much more concerned right now," says Baldwin, who knows many people who were laid off from Steelcase as the Michigan office-furniture company cut thousands of jobs in the past two years.

"In some cases, a lot of innocent people have been held without enough facts," says Gena Maddox, a 42-year-old mother of three in Little Rock, Ark.

But if Democrats want voters to hear their arguments on the economy and other issues, they must first convince these voters that they are credible, competent guardians of security.

'How do we know that you will be able to do this?'" Women, especially, need candidates to meet this requirement.

All of which explains why presidential contender John Kerry, a Senator from Massachusetts, rarely misses an opportunity to allude to the fact that he is a much decorated Vietnam veteran.

"I can't wait to remind this country that landing on an aircraft carrier with a Navy pilot doesn't make up for the lack of an economic plan or a security plan for the United States of America."

Florida Senator Bob Graham, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, argues that the war with Iraq was a distraction from the real business of fighting global terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and Hizballah, and accuses the Administration of covering up intelligence information from before 9/11 that might help the country protect itself from future attacks.

Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman frequently points out that he was pushing for a Homeland Security Department when Bush was still against the idea, and issues almost daily warnings that the Administration is not doing enough to protect the nation's ports or providing enough money for police, fire fighters and medical personnel.

Said Republican National Committee Chairman Marc Racicot: "Many of the same Democrats who now criticize the President's efforts to protect our homeland ...

It's that kind of impatience with point-scoring politics that nettles women like 31-year-old Stacy McDaniel, who stockpiles water and canned goods in San Diego, and plans her exit route when she goes to a ball game.


Full Article <font color="red"><u>Here</u></font>