Voting To Kill

In this mail today was a copy of Jim Geraghty's Voting To Kill: How 9/11 Launched the Era of Republican Leadership. Pressed for time, I slipped it into a cargo pocket of my shorts and took my daughter to her beginning tap/ballet class.

After Little One disappeared behind the door of the dance studio, I schlepped back to the waiting area and began to read, interrupted here and there by toddlers toddling and cross-chatter--all moms; the other solo dad bolted within minutes to return when the lesson was over, and not a second before--and the oddest thing occurred. Geraghty's assumptions were put to the test directly before my eyes.

The first chapter of the book is called "Post-9/11 America" and it deals, as you might guess, with the emotional impact of 9/11 as it reverberates even today. Among the people discussed were "security moms," suburban mothers who had voted Democratic in 1992 and 1996 and 2000, who radically had their worldviews resculpted as they watched five hundred Americans vaporized on live television.

Leading up to the 2004 elections, Democrats seemed to discount the security moms, and they lost. They still discount the security moms, and act as if they never existed. They do exist. I heard them tonight.

Yesterday morning, an equipment malfunction shutdown nearby Shearon Harris nuclear power plant, and the plant remained offline under the non-emergency shutdown today.

As little girls scuffed tap shoes on hardwood floors in the next room and I buried my nose in Chapter One, these moms were discussing more than just the shutdown. They talked about the shutdown, what they would do in the event of a leak, what they thought might happen if terrorists attack, and what they thought the likelihood of a successful attack was (not good, according to the moms). They discussed other possible area targets as well before the line of conversation ran dry and they switched over to another topic... the up-coming year-round schools, l think.

But my point is that while I was reading about the security moms in Voting To Kill that many Democrats seem to think have gone the way of the dinosaurs, there they were--crikey!--all around me, still very much aware and alert and as conversant on matters of nuclear planet security as they are school fundraisers. Security moms are alive and well and now an integral part of the big Who We Are. Democrats will ignore them again in '06, and find new and exciting excuses for why they continue to lose.

Class was over for the night. I learned something. It's also apparent in the first chapter of Voting To Kill, that Democrats obviously haven't.