Goodbye, Soccer Mom. Hello, Security Mom

JEFFREY L. BROWN FOR TIME
Debbie Creighton, 34, spends her days watching Fox News, fearing a new attack and craving a strong President

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All of this doesn't necessarily mean that President Bush has a lock on these women or that there are no opportunities for Democrats. "On all kinds of measures, women are more worried than men," says Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg. "They're worried about their personal security, but that doesn't mean soccer moms aren't still concerned about education, health care and social security." The latest TIME/CNN poll indicates that while 63% of Americans continue to approve of the job President Bush is doing overall, only 42% think he's doing enough about unemployment, and just 40% believe he's handling the budget deficit as he should. Kerry Baldwin of Grand Rapids, Mich., says her vote in 2004 will ride on economic issues. "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. And some are worried about what domestic security measures are doing to the civil liberties that make the U.S. unique. "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. Kansas Democratic Governor Kathleen Sebelius heard it on the campaign trail last year: "People seemed to be saying, 'Assure us that you will know what you are doing' on the security front. 'How do we know that you will be able to do this?'" Women, especially, need candidates to meet this requirement. Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says the literally thousands of women he encountered at shopping malls and supermarkets in three months of campaigning last year focused on one thing before all others: "Am I safe? Are my children safe? Is there going to be another attack? What about anthrax?" Bush is vulnerable in '04, Biden says, "but not if we don't establish credibility on security issues."

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. As he concluded a speech to members of EMILY's List, the women's political group, last week in Washington, Kerry took a swaggering jab at Bush's most celebrated photo opportunity of late, getting off a riff that might have seemed more appropriate for a V.F.W. hall than before a liberal-leaning audience of women activists. "I know something about aircraft carriers. I've worked with aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin," he said. "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."

Other Democratic presidential contenders are taking aim at Bush on national safety. 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. Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean has accused the Administration of "strangling the cities and the towns and not giving them the money that's necessary to protect them."

But the Republicans are not shy about firing back. The party issued a memo last week pointing out instances in which the various Democratic candidates had voted to cut intelligence funding and other security programs. Said Republican National Committee Chairman Marc Racicot: "Many of the same Democrats who now criticize the President's efforts to protect our homeland ... [also] criticize legislation they supported which provides the President the tools to make us safer."

But is this skirmishing the kind of talk women want to hear? Republican pollster David Winston was one of the first to identify the shift from Soccer Mom to Security Mom, and he warns: "What these women are looking for are solutions to make their families and children safer. It's about solutions; it's not about partisan bickering." Democratic political consultant Rachel Gorlin agrees: "We can't criticize what the Bush Administration is doing unless we make it clear that the criticism is toward a new and improved approach we're turning people off." 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. "I expect our leaders to get more done now," she says. "I'm less tolerant of inefficiency. I'm less tolerant of poor decision making." For their own security, both parties are scrambling to listen and respond to women like her.