It happens every four years — a neologlsm is added to the American political vocabulary, usually put there by pollsters feeding a media hungry for nonsense terminology that will make them sound and feel like insiders. Remember when, in 1992, we learned about “rapid response” and the “narrowing” — you know, when races get close? Or in 1988, when the term “going negative” became popular? Or 1984, the year of the “gender gap”? Well, the term of 1996 is . . . soccer moms. A Nexis search turned up 127 mentions of it, and it was whipping around the conventions, almost as catchy as the Macarena.
“Soccer moms” are the year’s most desirable voting bloc, and not because the campaigns are suddenly desperate to find mothers who play soccer.
No, the term is a sociological one, a polite way for the politically correct to say they want the votes of suburban women. Married suburban women. Married suburban women with decent incomes. Oh, what the hell — white married suburban women with decent incomes.
Dick Morris supposedly told the Clintons that the margin of victory lay with the soccer rooms. A Republican consultant we know says he thought the term up. The truth is to be found within our Nexis search itself. In 1982, according to the Associated Press, a man in Ludlow, Mass., stole $ 3,150 from the treasury of his wife’s club, dubbed the Soccer Moms. In 1992, according to the Charlotte News & Observer, women in North Carolina started a T- shirt company called “Soccer Mom.”
This leads us to one inexorable conclusion: that Dick Morris, or our Republican friend, or whoever, did a Nexis search on the word “mom,” looking for inspiration, and came across “soccer mom,” just as we did. And now it’s everywhere. Maybe we should rethink the whole concept of a database.
