Lots of people are trying to explain exactly why the election went the way it did.

There are a lot of theories, and I’m sure that many of them explain part of what happened.

I don’t claim to know what most people were thinking about every issue or how they decided the way they did.

The bottom-line, I think, is that more people felt more comfortable with Bush as president than Kerry. Not because of deep strategic planning, or because they thought that a complex function of all of the issue positions resulted in a stronger alignment with Bush; but because they just felt better about Bush as a person being more likely to do the right thing when it matters.

I think they were right about that.

I don’t agree with some that there was never a chance of a Kerry victory, but it’s gratifying to know that there are still a lot of sensible people here who aren’t easily manipulated by celebrity endorsements or shrill attacks or terrorist threats.

Yay America!

UPDATE: I agree with this David Brooks Op-Ed. The “moral values” explanation has been overblown, and is mostly an excuse for liberals to evade their defeat on the real issues of the day.