THE SAVAGE STRUGGLE FOR POWER / SPECIAL REPORT: CAMPAIGN ’92 : Democrats Have Campaign Strategy, Just Need Candidate

The Democrats have a front-runner.

Not.

That’s more or less the story of the 1992 Democratic campaign so far. The press can’t quite decide whether Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton is a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination, or whether he is dead meat.

The reason why Clinton is doing so well is that he looks like a winner. That’s also the reason why stories about his personal life can get him into so much trouble. If he no longer looks like a winner, Democrats have no compelling reason to support him.

The Democrats are paying a price for having a field dominated by unknown candidates. A candidate like Clinton can become a sudden sensation. But if the candidate doesn’t have a secure base--people who know him and trust him and believe in him--then one mistake, a little bit of bad news, and he’s history. Those who live by the media, die by the media.

Normally, if you win the New Hampshire primary, you get your picture on the cover of Time. Last week, Clinton was on the cover of Time. But the New Hampshire primary is still a month away. It’s a whole new approach to politics: Prizes first, contests later.

Clinton has been gaining momentum--what George Bush once called the “Big Mo”--before a single vote has been cast. Is this genuine or just a press phenomenon? It’s a little of both. The press needs a front-runner, if only to take pot shots at. “Is Bill Clinton for Real?” the Time cover asks, snidely. New York magazine ran a Clinton cover asking, “Who Is This Guy?”

On the other hand, something does seem to be happening, at least in the polls. The latest poll of New Hampshire Democrats, sponsored by the Boston Globe, has Clinton in the lead with 29% of the vote, followed by former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas at 17% and Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey at 16%.

What Democrats know about Clinton is that he is a smart, substantive, young, charming, experienced, attractive, moderate Southerner. He was born to modest circumstances. He is a former Rhodes Scholar and Yale Law School graduate. He plays the saxophone and claims to know the words to every Elvis Presley song. He is also a Washington outsider. Perfect.

The question is: What do they not know about Clinton?

The Democrats are lining up behind Clinton because they smell blood. The recession has wounded George Bush, and Bush is a bleeder. After 10 years of Reaganomics, the Democrats don’t want to fool around any more. They are determined to find the best guy to beat Bush, get him through the early primaries and then shut the process down. It’s the oldest myth in U.S. politics: All the Democrats have to do is hold their party together and the Republicans won’t stand a chance.

It should only be so easy.

What’s going on in the Democratic Party is a willful suspension of doubt. For example, organized labor has problems with Clinton. They complain that Arkansas is a right-to-work state; that Clinton supports the free-trade agreement with Mexico, and that he implemented a program of teacher-testing. The Arkansas AFL-CIO is divided over whether to endorse him. Nonetheless, several important union locals have broken for Clinton in recent weeks, including those representing teachers and public employees.

Liberals also have problems with Clinton. He supports work requirements for welfare mothers. His environmental record is spotty. He supported the Gulf War. He favors a law requiring parental consent for teen-age girls to get abortions. He chaired the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.

Nonetheless, Clinton is liberal enough for most liberals. After all, he wants to double Bush’s defense cuts and cancel “Star Wars.” He defends activist government and is a renowned policy wonk on issues like education reform and investment incentives. Liberals may not agree with Clinton on everything, but their attitude is, “We can live with that.”

The Democratic Party Establishment is falling in line behind Clinton. A survey of Democratic National Committee members shows Clinton in the lead. Democratic Party chairman Ronald H. Brown pressured Gov. Mario M. Cuomo to take his name off the New York primary ballot as a favorite-son candidate. Brown didn’t want any stop-Clinton forces rallying around Cuomo.

Clinton has been endorsed by Southern whites like Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and Southern blacks like Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.). He has won support from pro-Daley Chicago whites and anti-Daley Chicago blacks. Clinton even raised $50,000 from a group of conservative Orange County, Calif., businessmen who were fed up with Bush’s economics.

Clinton emerged from the pack largely because of the weakness of the rest of the field. All the other candidates look like the Democratic Party’s past. Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin sounds like a warmed-over Walter F. Mondale. Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey sounds like a warmed-over Gary Hart. Paul E. Tsongas sounds like a warmed-over Michael S. Dukakis. Former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. sounds like a warmed-over Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.

True, Clinton sometimes sounds like a warmed-over Jimmy Carter. But Carter is the only Democrat to win the presidency in the past 25 years.

The early withdrawal of Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, the only black candidate in the race, frees up the black vote. That, too, should work to Clinton’s advantage. He is the only candidate who has had solid experience with black voters.

Clinton’s advantages look formidable. Except for one thing. His lead is based on the perception that he can win. There is very little commitment to the candidate himself. The Globe poll asked New Hampshire Democrats if there was any candidate they had already decided to vote for. Almost 80% said no. Only 8% spontaneously named Clinton. His support is not so much a following as a coalition of opportunity.

Clinton has already had to address rumors of marital infidelity. The candidate dismissed them as malicious and unsubstantiated. Last week, the Star, a supermarket tabloid, claimed it had come up with a “smoking bimbo.” But the tabloid had set the fire by paying her a lot of money to talk.

Clinton’s problem is that if evidence turns up of a real stain on his character, it could have a devastating effect. It would demolish the major premise of his appeal--that he is the one candidate who can beat Bush. Party leaders would desert him just as quickly as they deserted Hart in 1987. Where would they go?

Some would go to to Kerrey, the candidate with the next broadest electoral appeal. Kerrey has a great story. He is a disabled Vietnam veteran who won the Congressional Medal of Honor. In fact, Kerrey was on both sides of the issue that divides the baby-boom generation. He fought in the Vietnam War, and later he opposed the war--as opposed to Vice President Dan Quayle, who did neither. Kerrey also has one good issue--an ambitious national health-care plan.

But his campaign so far has been impulsive and unfocused. He is an unknown player in national politics, and a lot of Democrats worry that he is not ready for prime time.

The Democrats also have to settle on a strategy for beating Bush. They have always assumed that if they could somehow reclaim the South, they could restore their party to the electoral predominance it enjoyed from the 1930s to the 1960s. It certainly worked for Carter in 1976.

On the other hand, the South has become the GOP’s national base. These days, national Democrats do worse in the South than in any other part of the country. Even Carter could not hold the South against Reagan in 1980. The alternative would be for Democrats to pursue a “California strategy”--forget the South and go for the liberal and industrial states of the West Coast, the Midwest and the Northeast.

Which strategy seems more promising for 1992? If you rank-order the states by the average vote they gave Carter in 1976 and 1980, you get the Southern strategy. The two elections where the Democrats did best in California, relative to the national average, were 1972 and 1988. Those were the years when the Democrats nominated New Politics liberals, George McGovern and Dukakis. If you average the 1972 and 1988 Democratic votes and rank-order the states, you have the California strategy.

There are 12 states the Democrats would have to carry under either strategy to get an electoral vote majority. They are the Democrats’ base. Seven of these states are in the Northeast. The Democrats averaged 53.5% of the vote in these 12 states in 1988. Eight went for Dukakis, while the other four--Pennsylvania, Maryland, Missouri and Delaware--voted for Bush.

Under the California strategy, the Democrats would need to carry 11 additional states, mostly on the West Coast and in the industrial Midwest. Only three of those states went Democratic in 1988. But the vote tended to be close. On the average, the 11 states needed for the “California strategy” voted 48.4% Democratic in 1988.

The Southern strategy adds 12 new states to the Democratic base. All but one are Southern. Not one voted for Dukakis in 1988. The Democrats averaged only 41.3% of the vote in these 12 states.

This means it would take a much stronger swing to get the South to vote Democratic in 1992 than it would to build a winning coalition outside the South. The California strategy looks more promising--even though California has gone Democratic for President only once since Harry S. Truman.

But Dukakis was supposed to be pursuing the California strategy in 1988. In fact, Dukakis did pretty well in California--48%, two points better than he did in the country as a whole. In both 1976 and 1980, Carter did worse in California than he did in the country as a whole. Nevertheless, all Democrats know is that Dukakis was a disaster. He got wiped out in the South, despite the presence of Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen on the ticket.

The Southern strategy is the anti-Dukakis strategy. Instead of trying to build strength in the states where Dukakis did relatively well in 1988, like California, the idea is to go after those states where Dukakis was weakest.

Thus the argument for Clinton: Put a Southerner at the top of the ticket, and it’s going to be easy for the Democrats to beat Bush.

California Strategy California: 54 New York: 33 Pennsylvania: 23 Illinois: 22 Michigan: 18 Massachusetts: 12 Missouri: 11 Washington: 11 Wisconsin: 11 Minnesota: 10 Maryland: 10 Connecticut: 8 Oregon: 7 Iowa: 7 Hawaii: 4 New Mexico: 5 West Virginia: 5 Rhode Island: 4 Delaware: 3 Montana: 3 South Dakota: 3 Vermont: 3 Washington, D.C.: 3 Total 23 states: 270 electoral votes 270 electoral votes needed to win