POLITICS / DEMOCRATS’ PROBLEMS : Quiet Iowa Scene Shows Party Is Slow to Launch White House Bid : Likely candidates seem reluctant to begin campaigning for 1992. Some see the lack of a rallying message.

When Black Hawk County Democrats gathered at the United Auto Workers’ hall for their annual “all-Iowa” fund-raising dinner three weeks ago, everything seemed pretty much as usual. Green-and-white checkered tablecloths. A cash bar. Inch-thick Iowa pork chops. And of course, campaign posters.

But one element was conspicuously missing. In a state that traditionally has been the starting-place for the nation’s presidential campaigns, there was not even a hint of presidential politics. The posters were solely for 1990 gubernatorial candidates.

By this time four years ago, two 1988 contenders--Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt and Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.--already had done preliminary stumping in this Democratic stronghold, and support in this state was building for them and other Democratic presidential hopefuls. But this year, Mike Adams, head of the UAW’s retirees’ committee, says: “People feel we don’t need all that bull.”

Not just in Iowa, but all over the country, the Democratic drive to regain the White House in 1992 is getting off to a decidedly slow start. The fundamental reason: Shaken and sobered by past defeats, Democrats are having a difficult time finding a suitable message to use in rallying their forces against George Bush.

Bush himself is a large part of the Democratic problem. It’s not only that he stands so high in the polls; more significantly, his relative blandness defuses traditional Democratic passions.

When Ronald Reagan was in the White House, it was easier for Democrats to define themselves--merely by opposing Reaganism. “The things that Reagan was doing were just so appalling to Democrats, we didn’t see any reason to develop any other message,” William Carrick, manager of Gephardt’s 1988 presidential bid, recalls.

Yet, for all his blandness,the President still seems to hold the political initiative, relegating the Democrats to awaiting the outcome of his policies.

“If he doesn’t manage the economy well enough, the country will be ripe for a Democratic message,” says New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, one of several reluctant Democratic prospects for 1992.

Another reason for the current inactivity is that the candidates who started earliest in 1988--notably Gephardt, who already had made nine visits here by this time four years ago--finished out of the money. “All they did was waste time and money,” Mike Adams says.

Democratic National Chairman Ron Brown attributes the current lull in presidential campaigning to the preoccupation of the party’s most-prominent prospects--such as Bradley, New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr.--with their own 1990 reelection campaigns.

But that does not explain the silence of the likes of Virginia Sen. Charles S. Robb and Florida Sen. Bob Graham, both of whom have been mentioned for national office. Nor does it shed light on why no promising newcomers have come forward yet.

Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, the 1988 vice presidential nominee, “has been moving quietly around the country,” Brown points out.

But some Democrats find it hard to see Bentsen, now 68, as the wave of the future.

Brown claims to be pleased that Democrats won’t know who their candidates will be until next year. “Voters are tired of three-year campaigns,” the chairman says.

For the time being, Democrats--from potential presidential contenders to the rank-and-file--seem to be treading water, often preoccupied with the past.

“I’m still a Ted Kennedy man,” said Lyle Smith, who tended bar at the Democratic dinner here two weeks ago, and backed Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in his losing battle against President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 caucuses.

Local activist Jeanne Alexander, a Gephardt supporter in 1988, remains bitter about how vehemently Democratic rivals attacked her candidate after he won the Iowa caucuses that year. “They just ganged up on Gephardt and made hash out of him,” she said.

With new leaders so slow to go public, potential followers seem to be drifting away--that even includes Iowa’s usually active auto workers, who have long been a bulwark for Democratic liberalism both here and around the country.

“Our members don’t necessarily take up the UAW goals like they used to,” said John Stewart, president of Waterloo’s UAW local 838. “Their biggest concerns are crime and drugs. They have moved to the middle of the road.”