WASHINGTON INSIGHT

SEEKING POLITICAL ADVANTAGE: Some liberal Democrats and abortion-rights activists are gearing up for a major effort to challenge Judge David H. Souter’s nomination to the Supreme Court, but their leaders concede they will be hard-pressed to block the appointment. Instead, they will try to create an issue for state election campaigns.

While Souter has kept his personal opinions to himself, many abortion-rights advocates assume that the New Hampshire judge’s conservatism will mean trouble for them, and plan a vigorous fight against his nomination, if only to build political capital for campaigns for state offices and congressional seats.

“We want to hold him up as an example of what can happen if we’re not diligent on Election Day,” one key strategist says. One potential target: the North Carolina U.S. Senate race, pitting Republican incumbent Jesse Helms against Democratic challenger Harvey Gantt.

California’s Sen. Alan Cranston, for one, believes his fellow Democrats are on the right track. “Wherever there is a reasonably close Senate race in which a vote for Souter was cast (by the Republican incumbent), it will give an advantage to Democrats,” Cranston says.

BUDGET BLUES: White House budget strategists are becoming increasingly worried that President Bush will have to order sharp cuts in federal spending, as required by the Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction law, on Oct. 1. Such a move could eventually spark a political firestorm.

Despite Bush’s veiled threat to keep Congress in session through late summer to pursue efforts to reach agreement on the federal budget, Democrats showed little sign of being able to agree among themselves on a counter offer to the White House’s opening gambit late last week--proposals to increase taxes on alcoholic beverages and to limit deductions on federal tax returns for state and local taxes paid.

Instead, lawmakers proposed to convene budget negotiators for a few sessions during the August congressional recess, but House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) has privately expressed fear that a compromise might not be reached before October--too late to avoid mandatory spending cuts.

“The whole thing isn’t going well,” one budget-watcher says. “What we need here is a crisis--and we may not get one until it’s too late.”

MORE THAN ROUTINE: Let’s Make a Deal may be the theme at the State Department on Aug. 9 and 10, when Secretary of State James A. Baker III has his first formal meeting with Israel’s new foreign minister, David Levy.

Although the session is billed as a get-acquainted meeting, U.S. officials say it is of more than routine significance. Levy, with an important domestic political base of his own, may hold the key to jump-starting the stalled Middle East peace process.

By U.S. standards, Levy is hardly a peacenik when it comes to policy toward the Arab states, but at home he is regarded as a man who, like Baker, is willing to compromise.