This appears to consist of scaring women, then making up a fun category called "security moms", and then telling that they're going to vote for Bush because he has kept us so safe ( like on 9/11 2001). Or of feminism ultralite as discussed in my earlier post on this page. Campaigning for women's votes has practically nothing to do with asking women what they want from the president of this country.
An article in Women's E-news points out that there are many ways of finding topics that women voters could be interested in:
To illustrate: A front-page story in the Aug. 22 Atlanta Journal-Constitution on new rules for overtime pay used as an example a female McDonald's team leader earning $28,000 annually who would lose her overtime pay because she can hire and fire, and contrasted her with a carpenter earning $125,000 a year who can still earn overtime because he doesn't supervise anyone. Note to politics reporter across the room: Why not ask the campaigns what they'll do about that?
An article in the same edition, on the metro page, profiled a couple who have been foster parents of 39 children, and now take in only those who are medically fragile. A good day for them begins at 6 a.m. and ends at 2 a.m. For this they earn about $4 an hour ($2 apiece) per child. Why not ask the campaigns where the family values are in that scenario?
A week later, a mention of a lack of family-friendly policies for working women is noted in a story about a female mayor of Athens, Greece. Hey, how about the lack of supportive policies for working women soon to vote for president of the United States?
But naah, this is soft stuff. It's not what politics is about today. We worry about a few thousand terrorists instead. Never mind if many more people are killed for quite preventable reasons at home or if the money we keep pouring into Iraq ends up in the pockets of Enron-like corporations and their shareholders. Look there! A terrorist warning! It will state that there is no special terrorist warning about the debates, but this could be just because the terrorist are so scary that they might attack without warning!
The soundbite is that Bush is keeping us safe by standing rigid against terrorism as he defines it. In reality, many American women are not safe in their homes or on the streets, and this has nothing to do with terrorism of the Bush type. But to speak about crime and its victims in general is not fascinating and interesting and adequately macho-smelling this year.