Clinton Votes Will Doom Democrats, Brown Charges : Politics: He tells Pennsylvania residents that nominating Arkansas governor will hand election to Bush. He also attacks President’s policies.

Former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. renewed charges Friday that Bill Clinton has “virtually no chance of being elected” in the November presidential contest, claiming that anyone who votes for the Arkansas governor might as well cast his ballot for President Bush.

Taking a cue from Pennsylvania Gov. Robert P. Casey during the final four days of this state’s Democratic primary campaign, Brown told a radio talk-show audience that despite Clinton’s front-runner status, the Democrats are wasting their time even considering him as their nominee.

“Anybody who wants to vote for Clinton, in my book, just pull the lever for Bush right now,” Brown advised during an hourlong session in which he served as the program’s guest host, taking phone calls from a group of questioners that seemed largely made up of his supporters.

During a walking tour of a blighted area in downtown Aliquippa, Pa., Brown said that “everyone I’ve talked to knows that voting for Clinton is like taking out a ticket on the Titanic. The music is playing, it sounds good, it looks good, the food is fine, but it’s going under water.”

In recent interviews, Casey has denigrated the Clinton campaign, saying that delegates to the Democratic National Convention should nominate a candidate who would be easier to sell to the voters in the fall.

Brown, who is lagging far behind Clinton in the delegate race and the Pennsylvania polls, adopted the Casey line Friday, seeking once again to become a vehicle for a protest vote that might slow Clinton’s nomination drive.

Later, in Philadelphia, he told a group of inner-city youths that the “new world order” that Bush has proclaimed “is a rip-off,” in which the government allows the export of jobs overseas and then keeps U.S. troops stationed abroad to maintain stability in foreign countries.

He called for increased import barriers to protect U.S. workers from foreign competition and for an education-and-training program--similar to the GI Bill scholarships made available to returning troops after World War II--to help revitalize the country.

Much of Brown’s rhetoric in recent days has been aimed at contrasting the plight of low- and middle-income Americans with that of the rich.

In appearance after appearance in economically hard-hit Pennsylvania, Brown has asserted that the top 1% of America’s income scale has “only become richer” during the Bush Administration and the Ronald Reagan Administration before it, while the middle class is “being ripped off.”

Unfailingly, he also has linked Clinton with what he calls the mainstream policies that have hurt middle-income voters. And he characterizes his own campaign as “an insurgency” that is needed to help overturn traditional elements in both the Republican and Democratic parties.

“What you have here is a real assault by the people who have most of the money,” he said. “If we all join together, we can fight back.”

Brown has recently renewed his harsh treatment of Clinton, ending a few weeks’ respite after Democratic National Committee Chairman Ronald H. Brown called on both candidates to ease up on their criticism of each other for fear of hurting whoever wins the nomination.

Brown now regularly scoffs that Clinton appears to have been “anointed,” and warns that the Democratic presidential nomination still is not in the bag, despite the assessments of so-called “pundits.”