“More taxes because I’m married … what were they thinking?” That’s the voice of a woman dubbed “Thinking Mom” in a new Bush campaign ad out this week, and it’s a voice that John Kerry needs to heed if he has any chance of being elected president. After the first presidential debate, Kerry improved markedly with a core Democratic constituency: single women, whose numbers are disproportionately elderly and black. But married women, genuine swing voters, still don’t seem to like John Kerry. Unless those women warm up to him, it’s hard to see how the Democrat can win.

Even as Kerry’s debate performance shifted overall voter attitudes in his favor – 39 percent said they had a “favorable” opinion of him before the debate in the ABC News poll, 47 percent afterwards – married women didn’t budge. Forty-eight percent viewed the Democrat unfavorably before the debate, 48 percent after the debate. No wonder George Bush is going after these voters so blatantly. If he can cut into the traditional Democrat advantage among women, the election is his.