State Democrats’ Election Year Rite of Self-Destruction

As we chatted before the opening of the Democratic state convention last Saturday, Kitty McKnight came through as the perfect example of the prospects and problems facing her party here in the presidential election.

McKnight, president of the Pasadena Foothill Democratic Club, is the kind of Democrat who has supported the party through dismal times and hopeless nominees.

This time, however, she is going for an insurgent, as I could see from the Jerry Brown button on her lapel. “I don’t think he has a chance, but you support who you believe in,” she said , her voice strong with the emotion of the truly dedicated. “I like him because he has vision and favors change. I hope he has enough delegates to be a broker at the national convention.”

Here in Los Angeles County, as the California primary campaign begins, this love affair with insurgency is a threat to party leaders trying to organize behind the man they figure has the nomination cinched, Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas.

McKnight and others like her represent the divisions in the party’s base. By fall, they must solidify behind Clinton or he will lose California, a state essential to his capturing the presidency. California Democrats such as Kitty McKnight will have to accept Clinton, still a distant figure known mainly for his personal life and his unconsummated encounters with the Selective Service and marijuana cigarettes.

Only when the party faithful are solidly behind the nominee can they move ahead with the real work of the fall campaign, carrying suburban neighborhoods where the registration is solidly Democratic, but where political apathy is high and voters often switch to the GOP.

If last weekend’s state Democratic convention was your first, you might have thought a unity pact had already been signed. Feel-good oratory filled the Bonaventure ballroom. Brown himself was all cooperation.

It was, however, all illusion, as any of the older delegates could have told you. A day later, Brown was in San Francisco, recanting his polite behavior and savaging Clinton again.

California Democrats were beginning their election year rite of self-destruction, a process that goes back in history.

Some of the fights have been stupid. In 1990, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown corralled huge amounts of campaign dollars for his futile fight against term limits. As a result, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dianne Feinstein didn’t have enough money for a voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaign and narrowly lost the election.

More relevant to this year, some of the past fights have been emotional, triggered by insurgencies. Robert Kennedy, jumping into the race late against Gene McCarthy in 1968, produced that sort of battle. So did the anti-war insurgency of George McGovern against Hubert Humphrey in 1972. Damage from these battles remains.

With such a history, it is unlikely that the Democrats will find it easy to put together a unity campaign, but party leaders are working hard at it.

The first task will be to solidify the Democratic base. That means persuading Kitty McKnight and the rest of the Pasadena Foothill Democratic Club--and like-minded Democrats--that Clinton is worth supporting.

If that is accomplished, the party will turn east and south from McKnight’s neighborhood. In the San Gabriel Valley’s Latino Democratic residential areas, efforts will again be made to boost the vote and get it behind the Democratic nominee. In southeast Los Angeles County, home of thousands of unregistered, non-voting Latinos, voter registration and get-out-the vote drives will be organized.

But the process won’t be easy. There’s more to Kitty McKnight than political activist. The red ribbon on her lapel showed her activity for the All Saints AIDS Service Center in Pasadena. As an African-American, her work at the Alkebulan Cultural Center shows her concern for her community.

These issues are as important as the Vietnam War was in its day. McKnight is conscious every day of the AIDS dead. She works for the African-American community’s survival at the cultural center. Brown’s rhetoric and symbolism, his wearing of the red ribbon of support for those with AIDS, struck a responsive chord and now she is expecting him to take his fight beyond the California primary to the convention floor.

If Bill Clinton wants to be a winner among such people, he’ll have to find a way to move beyond his past and speak to the issues that dominate their lives.