Democratic Contenders Offer Competing Visions

Three of the leading Democratic presidential candidates Thursday offered contrasting and converging visions of the party’s future as they bid for support from a nationwide gathering of liberals.

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean roused the left-leaning crowd with a call to arms against centrist Democrats. But Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts sternly warned the group that Democrats could not win next year’s election without convincing Americans they can be trusted on national security.

Another of the party’s White House hopefuls, Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), amplified his populist denunciations of President Bush and unveiled proposals to reduce the surge in prescription drug prices. Two of the longshot candidates -- former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois and Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio -- also spoke.

The session, sponsored by the Campaign for America’s Future, brought together more than 1,500 liberal activists from around the country. It was the latest in a growing number of joint appearances scheduled for most or all of the nine Democratic presidential candidates in the next several weeks, signaling the quickening pace of the campaign for the party’s nomination.

Thursday’s speakers struck many similar notes. They condemned the tax cuts Bush has pushed through Congress as favoring the rich, promised to expand access to health care and accused Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft of undermining civil liberties as the administration wages the war against terror.

Represented in the audience were some of the Democratic Party’s most liberal constituencies; the crowd included labor union leaders, environmentalists and community organizers.

They responded fervently to all criticism of Bush, and even more enthusiastically when Dean took aim at the Campaign for America Future’s bete noir -- the Democratic Leadership Council that for the last 20 years has sought to move the party toward the center.

Dean and the DLC have been tussling since mid-May, when two of the group’s leaders accused the candidate of representing a wing of the party “defined principally by weakness abroad and elitist, interest-group liberalism at home.”

Dean has been firing back, and Wednesday he received a roaring ovation for his latest salvo. “Those folks at the DLC are wrong,” he said. “The way to get elected in this country is not to be like the Republicans; it’s to stand up against them and fight.”

Though Dean several times emphasized his support for a balanced federal budget, he mostly stressed liberal themes. He pointedly chided Bush over the administration’s failure so far to find conclusive evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. “Mr. President, where are the weapons you told us about?” he said. “Where is the evidence?”

Before the highly partisan audience, Edwards sharpened the pitch of his usual criticisms of Bush. Echoing language President Clinton effectively used as a campaigner, Edwards said he was raised to believe that “if you work hard, you play by the rules, you can build a better life for yourself and for your family.”

But, he charged, “this president is doing everything in his power to break that bargain every single day. He is betraying the American people.”

Edwards maintained the populist chord in releasing his new plan to restrain rising costs of prescription drugs, an important factor in the rapid increases in health-care bills.

Edwards backed pending legislation to close loopholes in patent laws that he said allow manufacturers to unfairly keep lower-cost generic drugs off the market for years and called for a commission to study more far-reaching changes in patent laws affecting pharmaceuticals.

Like virtually all Democrats, Edwards said the federal government should create a prescription drug plan for seniors through Medicare -- rather than through private insurance firms, as most Republicans prefer -- and use the government’s vast buying power to negotiate lower drug prices. But Edwards went further than his rivals in proposing that Washington simply impose unilateral price reductions for Medicare purchases if those negotiations fail.

Edwards also urged a series of new limits on prescription drug advertising. He said manufacturers of pharmaceuticals should be required in their ads to disclose how their drugs performed compared with competing medicines and placebos. Democratic presidential hopeful Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri recently said he would completely ban television ads for prescription drugs.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America did not return a call seeking comment.

Kerry struck a different note in his appearance. After recounting his commitment to a series of liberal causes -- such as increasing education funding -- he appeared to surprise the mostly dovish audience by insisting that Democrats had to offer a muscular foreign and defense policy.

“If Democrats are not prepared to make America safer, stronger and more secure, for all we care about all those other issues, we will not win back the White House and we won’t deserve to,” Kerry said.

Kucinich, in an impassioned speech repeatedly interrupted by standing ovations, called for federally run, single-payer health care and sweeping cuts in defense spending. “We don’t need World War III; we need peace for the first time,” he said.

Moseley Braun stressed her opposition to many of Bush’s domestic security measures. “The White House is pandering to fear to keep us in war until the election is over,” she charged.

Scheduled to speak to the group today are the Rev. Al Sharpton and, via videotape, Gephardt. The party’s two other presidential contenders -- Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut and Bob Graham of Florida -- are not scheduled to appear.

Outside the conference hall, where an array of groups hawked their causes, activists at one table touted an Internet-based effort to draft Al Gore to reenter the race for the 2004 nomination. Though Gore has not expressed any interest, one such organization has scheduled a rally for Nashville on June 14.

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Times staff writer Justin Gest contributed to this report.