This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

There's been some speculation that for the first time in over 50 years the state of Utah could vote for the Democratic nominee for the president of the United States. As a self-described moderate living in the Beehive State, I would welcome that. As someone whose Mormon ancestors "crossed the plains" to Utah in the 19th century, I'm not so sure it's going to happen.

This is not because my ancestors wouldn't find themselves voting for a progressive candidate or a woman. They did that plenty in days gone by. It's that I'm not sure they will connect their historic values to a candidate who has been vilified for the past 20-plus years.

It's time for my fellow Mormons to rehabilitate Hillary Rodham Clinton for one another, not only because Clinton is the candidate most likely to defeat the horror that is Donald Trump, but because she is the most qualified, experienced and, yes, moral choice.

As a nation we suffer from a disease. Politico calls it "Our Weird Hillary Clinton Obsession," an obsession that is "especially weird because it is virtually unique in the history of American political campaigning." The "commentariat," epitomized by the likes of Anne Coulter and Glenn Beck, is fueling the anxiety over not only a post-racial presidency (Barack Obama), but now a post-gender one (Hillary Clinton).

But in Utah Clinton is in the dog house for other reasons as well. I'm told she seems to personify "pay-to-play" politics. Added to that is that she's a "liberal" who will stack the Supreme Court deck with activist judges. To be a politician, by definition, is to be compromised. Mormons, who make up 60 percent of the Utah population but 85 percent of its Republican voters, can't seem to get over the idea that all politicians "pay to play," some more ethically (and legally) than others. Clinton, despite the wild attempts to criminalize her, has yet to be indicted on any of the bogus claims that Rush Limbaugh and the GOP have flung at her.

As for the Supreme Court, the best rejoinder to that is found in The Economist, which corroborates that Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz's eternal kvetching about judicial activism is rarely really about that; instead it is simply "cries of despair masked as principled stances against unelected judges deciding major questions for hundreds of millions of Americans." When trade unions and abortion rights get shot down by the court in the next 10 years, a real possibility regardless of who Clinton's replacement(s) are, it will be the progressives' turn to wail.

Perhaps what vexes my Utah family and friends even more than these free-floating, largely evaporative anxieties is the equivocation of Clinton, the way she flips here and flops there on issues like free trade, immigration and gun control. There was another candidate who got accused of flip-flopping: Mitt Romney, the Mormon darling with strong Utah ties who twice now has lost a presidential election — one as a candidate and then later as the GOP nominee itself.

Though I was not a Romney supporter, I never thought that his flip-flops necessarily should have disqualified him for the presidency. (There were other more substantive reasons for that.) Nor should the changes Clinton made in her policy stances disqualify her either. You may not believe in organic evolution, but steeped as we all are in this hyper-mediated world; perplexed as we are with the daunting challenges of globalism; rattled as we routinely find ourselves by the technological explosion of instantaneous information retrieval — and looping memes … why is it that we can't see the inevitability and even wisdom of our leaders evolving in their political opinions?

The rehabilitation of Hillary Clinton in Utah is not impossible. But it will require that we be media literate so that we can discern between propaganda and truth; it means honoring the legacy of strong women in our own religious and state histories; and most importantly it means that we evolve ourselves as the political animals that humans are and that Utahns — pragmatic and loyal to their values as they are — have demonstrated in the past.

In the face of the GOP nominee, a symbolic vote "of conscience" is tyranny. Electoral politics is a blood sport, not Sunday School. This November, Utahns have the chance to check our "weird obsessions," and become the better selves that a humane world demands.

David G. Pace is a Salt Lake City-based author of the debut novel "Dream House on Golan Drive," set in Provo where he was born and raised.