Dear AOC Readers. We are a complex and unusual group: international, gender-balanced, progressive and also conservative? “Did you say ‘conservative’, Anne? You have conservative readers?”

In fact, AOC has a significant group of conservative women readers, many without college degrees and living in non urban parts of America. I joke that AOC is their closet progressive read.

While we’ve quantified the existence of these women readers, I’ve never sat down with them for a chat. My business career has often brought me into contact with women featured in last week’s NYTimes read: Crucial Subset: Female Voters Still Deciding.

President Obama’s support among white women voters is eroding among a group demographers call ‘Walmart moms’.

America’s shrinking middle class and just-getting by families includes many of these Walmart moms, and they are struggling at the end of President Obama’s first term as president. Many of these women voted for Obama in 2008 but are now drawn to Romney.

Behold the coveted female swing voter of 2012. She has slipped a rung or two down the economic ladder from the soccer moms of the more prosperous 1990s, as indicated by her new nickname — waitress mom. Rather than ferrying children around the suburbs in minivans, she is spinning in the hamster wheel of a tight economy and not getting ahead.

My own views of the Republican War on women are clearly established since 2010. But I understand that not every woman sees it that way. To be honest, I can’t change your mind in many cases.

The woman we’re talking to — hurricane or no hurricane — is a woman like Emmakate Paris, a voter featured in the NYT article, a woman disappointed in President Obama but afraid of Mitt Romney and what his presidency and a Republican Congress will mean for her and her family.

You see, Paris “is not thrilled with Mitt Romney either. She said he would set women back because he did not understand their needs.”

“Women worked so hard to get where we are today and to take our rights away from us is — no,” she said, shaking her head.

Each day until the election (Internet connections permitting with this horrific weather), we will feature a longer essay or group of thoughts to AOC readers from one of our other readers about the upcoming election.

I’m calling this feature Dear Walmart Moms. Our first letter came almost immediately on Facebook from someone I don’t know in person. Pat Kennedy is a friend of a friend, and she jotted down her thoughts sitting in a Viennese coffee shop. Pat is a good writer and clear communicator. She is also a businesswoman and job creator.

Many of us Democratic women ARE job creators and still find lots to respect about decisions made for workers and non-elite people by the Obama administration. Mitt Romney would have you believe that progressive women want government to run the show. This assertion is so far from the truth, that I want to launch Dear Walmart Moms with a businesswoman’s perspective. ~ Anne

Dear Walmart Moms #1 by Pat Kennedy