Maturity, not morality, won the election

If I had to characterize this election in a single phrase, I'd say it was an election about maturity, not morality. It was a referendum on serious issues and ultimately George Bush won because he was more serious about them than his opponent.

You've probably heard the reference before that the Democratic Party is the "mommy party" and the GOP is the "daddy party." The bottom line is that since 9/11 the country has been in no mood to listen to mommy.

Think about it. Democrats got their clocks cleaned in 2002 and again this year. They've suffered two history-defying losses in the last two cycles. As much as Democrats would like to boil these losses down to the bigotry of the South and/or the fear-mongering of Republicans, they simply can't seem come to grips with the primary reason for their failure: an inability to pass the national security test with the American people.

It's not that Democrats can't pass the test, but that they deliberately refuse to by shunning hawkish members of their party (like Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt) and by embracing antiwar leftists (like Michael Moore and Howard Dean). It's a schism that makes it extremely difficult for Democrats to be competitive nationally or in the South, and no one better represented the schism, both in symbol and in substance, than John Kerry. His campaign this year was the ultimate effort to dress mommy up like daddy, and voters could tell the difference. - T. Bevan
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