1988 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION : Liberalism: Many Democrats Avoid the Label but They Hew to Its Tenets

It’s not the way many Democrats would identify themselves in mixed company, not a name you’d call someone unless you want to start an argument.

The word is liberal--for decades the badge of the Democratic Party, but during the Reagan years, and even before, a sticky tag that it has tried to peel off.

Not atypical of those who attended the Democratic National Convention was R. M. Koster, a delegate who lives in Panama. He may have voted for George S. McGovern, Robert F. Kennedy and Walter F. Mondale, but he steadfastly maintained that he is not a liberal.

“I’m not a jerk,” he said. “I would call myself a moderate. Why? If someone asked about the state of my health, I wouldn’t say I’m fat, would I? I would say I’m a little overweight.”

Demise Long Noted

Juanita Dixon, a delegate from Canton, N. C., said that Democrats long ago stopped even using the word. “The word liberal? It went to L.A. and San Francisco. In western North Carolina, it wouldn’t wear too well.”

“Over the years, the Republicans have succeeded in making ‘liberal’ a dirty word,” California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown said.

“People blame liberalism for a lot of things that have gone bad,” said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). He cited a perception that liberals would let criminals run rampant, let the deficit balloon out of control with social spending and allow U.S. defenses to fall behind the Soviets.

Dukakis, who will spend the fall campaign fending off Vice President George Bush’s efforts to nudge him off the perceived center, has reveled in polls showing that voters perceive him as no more liberal than Bush. What might once have passed as aggressive government, Dukakis portrays as analytical problem-solving.

Even the Rev. Jesse Jackson, around whom the party’s left has coalesced, recently had a spirited exchange with reporters on his campaign plane over their insistence on referring to him as being on that edge of the political spectrum. Not so, he maintained, and asserted that his haves-vs-have-nots view of the world should be seen as “progressive.”

Resisting Move to Right

But it was clear at the convention that many Democratic hearts are resisting a rightward move. Polls of the delegates show that they still hew overwhelmingly to old-fashioned liberal values. Fully three-quarters of the delegates surveyed in a Times poll said they wanted more spending on welfare, while 96% would increase the housing budget. And two-thirds oppose the Gramm-Rudman budget-balancing law that went through Congress with huge Democratic majorities only a few years ago.

On the issue of taxes, 84% said the wealthy should pay a higher rate than they do now--one of several positions that put them closer to Jackson than to their party’s nominee.

But when it came to committing their party on these issues, delegates rejected tax increases for the wealthy. They managed to avoid even debating such issues as freezing military spending and promising specific increases in social spending.

“To the extent that (Dukakis) can keep things a little fuzzy, he keeps more people in his corner,” said Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), one of the more liberal Democrats in the original field of presidential hopefuls.

“We’ve got a chance to win now,” said Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City), a lawmaker who has never minded being called a liberal.

‘Have to Trim Our Sails’

“We have to get the Democrats who voted for Ronald Reagan to come back to the Democratic Party,” he said. “That means we may have to trim our sails on some programs we believe in, but the stakes are so high, this election is so important, it would be self-indulgent to do otherwise.”

This isn’t the first time the Democrats have tried to escape from the word liberal. In 1976 they nominated Jimmy Carter of Georgia who, like Dukakis, never labeled himself as a liberal and who was viewed by many voters as more conservative than his Republican opponent, Gerald R. Ford--one reason, Republicans complain, that the Democrats won the White House that year.

The 1976 and 1988 campaigns have another factor in common, which helps explain why the Democrats wanted to turn over a new ideological, or at least semantic, leaf. Both Carter and Dukakis were nominated after the party had suffered landslide defeats. And their standard-bearers in those fateful years--McGovern in 1972, Mondale in 1984--were unmistakable liberals who were overwhelmed by strong Republican incumbents.

Focus on Management

And, in 1976, as in 1988, as Democrats sought to regroup and recover from these disasters, they labored to change themselves and to change the way they were labeled. In both campaigns they picked nominees who resisted any ideological labeling and chose to cast themselves as skilled managers of government.

“In general, Dukakis does not fit that kind of image of someone who is going to tax and spend and not be concerned about budgets,” said Rep. Leon E. Panetta (D-Monterey). “And add (Texas Sen. Lloyd) Bentsen to the ticket, and it begins to tilt that kind of image even further away.”

For their part, alarmed Republicans will have none of it, and intend to portray Dukakis as the most liberal Democratic nominee since McGovern in 1972. Bush claims that Dukakis “speaks in moderate tones” that mask “the old inconsistencies of the left.”

Republicans will pound away. They will say that Dukakis is soft on crime because of his past support of a prison furlough program; opposes school prayer; supports gun control; dislikes many weapons programs, and could not even control his own state’s budget.

Polls Do Not Agree

Where the Democrats have perceived a stampede away from liberalism, however, polls do not. In a recent national survey, The Times found that 29% of registered voters referred to themselves as liberals--virtually the same proportion as nine years earlier. The proportion of self-described conservatives--36%--also stayed about the same.

Some liberals say that their party may be selling its soul. “Unfortunately, a lot of people are so preoccupied with winning that they are willing to make sacrifices that they shouldn’t,” Rep. Ron V. Dellums (D-Berkeley) said.

Others, however, believe that once Democrats regain the White House, they will be able to tap what they believe is basic public support for liberal programs. With the Reagan era ending, those who control Congress already have revived long-discarded causes, such as raising the minimum wage. “I think you’ll start seeing the word used a lot more,” Frank said. “We’ve been getting a bum rap.”

Staff writers Robert Shogan, George Skelton, Maura Dolan, Betty Cuniberti, Sara Fritz, Patt Morrison, Ron Harris and John Balzar contributed to this story.