Your columnists are concluding a midsummer, two-part review of Utah's political parties as the election season progresses. This week: the Democrats.

Webb: This should be the Democrats' big year, even in Utah. Republicans at the national level are reeling, battered by an unpopular president, an unpopular war, skyrocketing gas prices and a faltering economy. Democrats are rallying around an exciting presidential candidate.

So if the Democrats can't win in this environment, they are in sad shape, indeed. Are they capable of pulling defeat from the jaws of victory?

This year Utah Democrats are attempting to portray themselves as mainstream moderates, acceptable to typical Mormon voters. If Democrats are ever going to win statewide in Utah, they must claim a reasonable share of Mormon votes.

But the moderate, sensible Democratic image gets shattered when some Democrats get together and do what Democrats do. The Democrats' "Mormon problem" is mostly of their own making. Check out, for example, a recent Salt Lake Tribune story (please read it at www.sltrib.com/news/ci_9798705) about a gathering of the "drinking liberally" group at which prominent Democrats were present and liberally quoted. Take a good read. Enjoy.

I'm sure this was just a group of good-old-boy-and-girl repressed liberal Democratic legislators and others, needing to blow off a little steam in Mormon-dominated Utah. They protest that they don't represent all Democrats, and they certainly don't mean anyone any harm. Just a bunch of smirking "progressives" feeling stifled by the culture, enjoying a little vulgarity and ribaldry ... har, har, hee, hee ... listening to a thumping beat, the lyrics about our president I'd rather not repeat ... Takin' it to those right-wing nuts. Livin' in Utah is just the dregs, so you can't blame them for enjoying a little hilarity with their cute logo, "The Angel Moroni tipping an elongated pint of beer in place of the horn." Har, har, hee, hee. But they're really not anti-Mormon. So what if their logo choice came down to "... either the angel on top of the temple or the Salt Lake skyline with the prominent and, um, phallic Church Office Building." Har, har, hee, hee. Just a bunch of progressives poking a little fun at the dominant culture. Nothing funnier than the raunchy comments reported in the story.

So let's suppose a group of smirking, loud-mouthed Republican legislators, staff and candidates attended a party where blaring loudspeakers leveled the f-word at Barack Obama and the symbols of another religion or ethnic group were ridiculed in a highly profane manner and other vulgarities and slurs were directed at Democratic leaders. Can you imagine the outrage? The calls for apologies and resignations? Apoplectic editorial writers and columnists would leap to their laptops to write scathing, self-righteous essays denouncing the nasty Republicans.