In my role as soccer mom today, I was privileged to overhear a hearty debate among the other soccer moms. One mom started in on school vouchers and how that could cause the demise of the public school system. Another mom piped up saying she was a Bush supporter. These two moms then engaged in another debate about health care costs, which drew in a third mom. I didn’t participate because I was just fascinated by the whole conversation. The mom who started the whole thing is a volunteer for the Kerry campaign. She really did a pretty good job of trying to convince anyone who was listening that Kerry is the man for the job. We’re talking about a group of primarily working middle class, many of them finding themselves struggling to make ends meet, and many of them knowing people who’ve been laid off or have been laid off themselves, so it’s not the usual suburban soccer crowd of Lexus-driving, stand around and discuss stocks crowd. It was interesting to see what Bush messages had settled into the Bush supporter’s brain. She kept coming back to malpractice insurance. But she agreed with the Kerry woman’s points on a lot of things. Anyway, I was just proud of them for having an intelligent discussion of the issues–and the men were nowhere to be found.