Election 2022 — Utah saves Democracy
Glancing over at the election in Utah, which is maybe not all that interesting — Lee will win by double points — I am nonetheless curious on some dynamics. One is to stare at The New Republic headline, “How Utah’s Democrats Decided to Desert their Party to Save Democracy”. Do I waste a free link to read it (maybe read the print edition in the library). I assume and hope it is a behind the scenes internal party fight scene on the deliberations that lead to the move, but I am stuck on the query. Mike Lee — a guy you disagree with, who broadly agreed with President Trump but had differences, elected. Re-elected. Message: Democracy imperialed. Maybe the matter is that the Democrats chose to go with a guy with more mass appeal than previous figures who got stomped by many many tens of percentages — some rich guy who paid his own way, and some Lesbian activist — helps democratic process.
Jon Huntsman endorses Lee. He now finds himself off the anti-Trump Republican sideshow, as simultaneously broadest defined and narrowest defined — the small group of former Republicans who have taken in the whole of the Democratic platform while they were at it in defining Trumpism as including all of that Republican platform they theoretically once supported or tolerated.
I do not really care one way or the other how Mitt Romney chimes in or doesn’t, and think he can do so in whatever way and retain a basic political integrity and consistency. But this is apparently a parlor game of speculation and headlines by Deseret News and Utah media and politico honchos, headlines blaring.
I trust once this experiment vanishes, the Democrats can go back to losing with Democrats by thirty and forty points. They do have the mayor of Salt Lake City and usually a congress-critter. Beyond that, gadfly buzzing is a decent role.