Kerry's best - and last - chance to swing voters his way

By RUPERT CORNWELL

On a clear day, standing by the memorial not far from where the daily ferry takes workers from this suburban New Jersey town across the bay into Manhattan, you can see the city shimmering 32km away across the bay.

If you know it well, you can even spot the gap where the two towers once stood.

The memorial is a 152cm-tall slab of black granite, standing just above the beach, between two American flags fluttering in the gentle breeze. It carries an engraving of the old New York skyline, and a simple inscription: "In Memory of All Those Who Perished on September 11, 2001. Never Forget."

That day, Middletown lost 36 people in the destruction of the World Trade Centre and neither it nor New Jersey, nor the country, has forgotten.

Indeed, so powerful is the memory that even before the first presidential debate, it may have already settled the outcome of the 2004 election. When John Kerry squares off with George W. Bush today on national security and foreign policy, in Miami 2400km to the south, New Jersey should be on his mind.

For what is happening here, if left uncorrected, will surely doom his presidential bid.

Suburban and secular, with large numbers of blacks, Hispanics and Jews, New Jersey is supposed to be solid Democrat territory. Bill Clinton, after all, carried the state in 1996 by 18 per cent, and Al Gore did almost as well in 2000 against Bush.

Middletown is a microcosm of suburban East Coast USA. But something odd has happened.

Just a few weeks ago, Kerry looked set to secure another double-digit win for the Democrats. No more, however.

One poll just after the Republican convention showed Bush within hailing distance; another last week put the two candidates dead level.

Terror is not the only explanation for this unscripted turn of events.

The state's most populous north- eastern region is, to all intents and purposes, part of the New York television market, and was thus drenched in coverage of a very successful convention.

The local Democratic establishment has been thrown into turmoil, first by allegations of corruption in state government, and then by the shock resignation of the Democratic Governor James McGreevey, after he admitted a homosexual affair.

Then there are the general shortcomings of the Kerry campaign.

"The fact is he's a weak candidate," says a New Jersey political scientist. "The President has bad numbers here, yet Kerry hasn't been able to take advantage. A lot of people say that if Bill Clinton had been the candidate, he'd have been ahead by 10 points by now."

Instead, Kerry can do no better than level pegging - even though New Jersey's inhabitants believe by large margins it was wrong to go to war in Iraq, and that Bush is doing a bad job as President.

The paradox is to be explained in a single word. Women.

How times have changed. Clinton thrived among the so-called "soccer moms", suburban women with families, who worried about traditional Democratic issues such as education and health care, and who leaned instinctively to the candidate who, as the pollsters put it in their questionnaires,"cares about the problems of people like me".

But this year political marketing experts have identified a remarkable transformation. The "soccer mom" has mutated into a new specimen, the "security mom".

She still worries about jobs, schools and doctors. But her preference is likely to be for "the candidate who can keep me safer".

For the first time since World War II, national security is dominating an election. Poll after poll shows terrorism to be the most important issue in the campaign, with the economy next and Iraq a distant third.

The security mom wants a candidate with empathy, but above all one who can "keep me and my family safe". Not just Middletown, but all New Jersey lives in the shadow of September 11.

The state lost 700 people that day, and the gaping hole in the Manhattan skyline is a constant reminder. The fear is also current; in August, the FBI named a big financial institution in Newark, New Jersey's largest city, on a possible al Qaeda hit list.

But Middletown and New Jersey also exemplify a trend that may have reshaped the entire presidential contest - Bush's growing popularity among women. Republicans always do well among men, but the opposite sex has traditionally been a Democratic constituency.

Clinton carried the women's vote by huge margins, and even the rather less magnetic Gore defeated Bush among women by 11 points.

But that was four years ago. In New York, the Republicans made September 11 the central theme of their convention. A few days later came the Beslan tragedy in Russia, a ghastly reminder that in the global struggle with terrorism, not even young children in the sanctuary of a school were safe.

Suddenly, women found Bush's tough talk and macho swagger rather less off-putting.

If the Democrats did not immediately realise what was happening, the Republicans did. The Bush/Dick Cheney team sent Laura Bush, the most popular campaign speaker on either side, on an election trip to New Jersey.

In her soft Texas lilt, the First Lady pressed the right button: "As we grieve for the families in Russia and we mark the third anniversary of September 11, I believe what's most important is my husband's work to protect our country and to defeat terror around the world."

At a stroke Laura Bush turned herself into a national emblem of the security moms.

"From gun control to a woman's right to choose the environment, health care and the war on Iraq, Kerry is on the right side of the issues," says David Rebovich, a leading commentator on New Jersey politics. "But New Jersey is a September 11 state."

Belatedly the Democrats have woken up to this new reality, sending John Edwards, the vice-presidential candidate, to the state, to remind it of where its loyalties ought to lie.

Nonetheless, the state is unlikely to be a battleground, however close the contest, and however tempting its 15 electoral college votes. For one thing, neither side wants to spend on TV advertising in the hugely expensive New York and Philadelphia markets to reach New Jersey voters.

Even Republicans suspect that come voting day, New Jersey will again deliver for Kerry.

If he has to fight to hold New Jersey, he hasn't a prayer of a chance of winning the White House anyway. The last time the state went Republican was in 1988, when the first George Bush defeated Michael Dukakis, another Democrat from Massachusetts, in a near-landslide - in part by making a mockery of Dukakis' national security credentials.

Bush, the son, has a similar strategy today, deriding Kerry as a vacillator and a "flipflopper" who cannot be trusted to make the country safe.

Cheney has gone further still, telling campaign audiences that if Kerry is elected, more terrorist attacks are likely.

The Democrats cried foul, and the Vice-President issued a partial retraction, but the damage was done. In New Jersey and elsewhere, voters' confidence in Kerry to cope with the terrorist threat took another hit.

That is the main reason why he enters the debate trailing Bush by between six and eight points.

To reassure the waverers of Middletown the Democrat has to turn the national security/Iraq issue on its head today.

Bush's perverse brilliance has been to present Iraq not merely as part of, but as the "central front" in the "war on terror", and that America is somehow safer with Saddam out of power.

Of late Kerry has sharpened his attacks. But nothing he has said, nor a string of embarrassing CIA leaks (the latest that months before he went to war Bush was warned by his intelligence that invasion would fuel insurgency and the cause of Islamic extremism) has thus far made much difference.

In the debate, the challenger must uncouple Iraq from the war on terror - or rather, argue that if Iraq is indeed the central front, then the war is going very badly indeed. Far from making the country safer, Kerry will contend, Bush blew his chance of dealing with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda once and for all in Afghanistan, by blundering into the blind alley of Iraq.

The strict time limits and various other debate rules will make the Democrat's task hard. The candidates will not be allowed to question each other directly, for instance, and follow-ups are not allowed.

But however imperfect the format, the debate is Kerry's best, and probably last, chance of measuring himself directly against the President on the issue that will settle the election - and of convincing the watching citizens of Middletown, New Jersey and America of his cause.

- INDEPENDENT