Democrat should not underestimate the impact of Sarah Palin on the Republican ticket. Sure, her speech lacked policy specifics and was full of inconsistencies, but she was also able to relay to millions of soccer moms out there that she was one of them.

Michelle Obama tried to play the mom card at the DNC. At the time I thought she a good job of it, but Palin was better. Michelle is a little too well dressed, a little too thin. I heard some rumbling in the blogosphere that she hadn’t really raised her kids.

Palin, on the other hand, looks like them. The PTA mom wears a pressed white t-shirt from Kohl’s, a pair of capris, and slip on shoes from DSW. There’s a little extra bump in that hump. She’s neat, but casual. Practical shoulder length hair and maybe a pair of earrings that she bought at a jewelry home party. An accessory would be a diaper bag rather than a alligator purse. She would feel self-conscious in the sleeveless dresses that look so fabulous on Michelle. She goes to Curves to work out, because the hard bodies at the other gyms are a little intimidating.

She may work a paying job, but it is a flexible job that she can work around the kids’ schedules. Since the job is flexible and part time, she’s probably under paid and taking orders from a man.

The PTA mom has a lot on her plate. She’s coordinating after school schedules and going to meetings in the evening. She’s quite certain that her husband and any other man could not pack a school lunch to save their life. To get through the day, she puts on her commando-hat and marshals the forces and sets on her way. She and the other PTA women give each other pats on the back, because they feel that men aren’t doing that.

At the PTA meeting, she’s given her first taste of power. Husbands are discouraged from attending, because finally they can run things and not take orders from men. They have the gavel in the front of the room and they learn about convening political meetings and finding the best place to buy cheap pizza for Pizza Day at school. Sure, some meetings might end with a poem about their kids with apologies to "The Night Before Christmas," but there is also some nice political training going on there. The women deal with school officials and have the power of their sizable fund raising efforts to get some respect from principals and superintendents. Some PTA moms even make the transition to local politics, just as Palin did, and they highly respect them.

Palin touched on the ideology of the soccer mom – the belief that they are tough as nails, that they would fight to the death for their kids, that men underestimate them, that their job is just as hard as any man’s. Michelle missed the boat on that one.

Democrats better get to talking about policy and issues, areas where the Republicans are weak. They’ve got to let the experience thing go. They’ve got to talk about the policies and issues that would actually help the soccer mom – universal pre-K, health care, special education, daycare services, and so on. They’ve got to point out that this hockey mom never mentioned the word education in her speech. And they really shouldn’t underestimate the secret sorority of PTA moms.