Clinton’s Early Moves Offer Hints About His Game Plan : Politics: The candidate is focusing on California, the industrial Midwest and Southern border states.

Almost one month since Bill Clinton accepted the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, the contours of how he believes he can win the election can clearly be seen in the places he has campaigned and the messages he has delivered.

Friday, in the middle of his second trip through California, Clinton traveled to the Los Angeles County community of San Gabriel to deliver his message of economic change to middle-class and working-class voters whose support he will need to prevail in November.

California is at the heart of every Democratic victory scenario. But since Clinton officially claimed the nomination, the Arkansas governor has concentrated even more attention on the industrial states of the Midwest and the border states of the South. And for the most part, he has stayed out of the Northeast, where Democrats believe their prospects dramatically improved when Ross Perot decided not to launch an independent bid for the White House.

Despite polls that continue to show Clinton with a wide lead over President Bush, both Democratic and Republican political leaders assume the race will tighten significantly over the next several weeks, a process likely to begin following next week’s GOP convention.

Asked recently what he sees as the election’s main battleground, Democratic strategist Paul Tully responded: “There is a census region called East North-Central; that’s where I would look.”

Not by coincidence, it is exactly through that region--encompassing the large industrial states of the Midwest--along with the border states of the upper South that Clinton repeatedly has crossed on his campaign trips during the last month.

Already, Clinton has campaigned twice in Pennsylvania and Illinois, mixing visits to those key states with stops in Ohio, Missouri and Kentucky. Over the next several days, he plans a trip to Michigan, plus a third bus trip--starting in Detroit--that will take him and running mate Al Gore through Ohio before ending in western New York.

The Republicans have many of the same states on their target list. In recent weeks, for example, Bush has campaigned in both Ohio and Pennsylvania. And the President’s current $5-million advertising campaign includes substantial purchases of TV air time in Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Kentucky and North Carolina.

Also targeted in the ad blitz have been states such as Texas, Florida, Georgia and Alabama--places where Bush feels a need to rebuild his electoral base.

Four years ago, Midwestern states--particularly Ohio--were crucial to Bush’s ability to checkmate Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis. This time, however, the Democrats believe their message will resonate far better with voters in that crucial region.

The Clinton message has many components--education and training, health care, economic competitiveness, racial reconciliation. During much of the campaign, he often has had trouble boiling down his ideas to a simple, easily remembered essence.

He has made significant strides toward conquering that problem, and audiences--such as the enthusiastic crowd of several hundred in San Gabriel--have been responding warmly to the basic pitch.

Middle-class and working-class Americans have suffered over the last decade, he contends, because the “country has been in the grip of a false economic theory”--the Republican promise that if the government simply kept taxes low on the wealthy and otherwise stayed out of the way, the economy would grow.

“It hasn’t worked,” he said. “I want to replace trickle-down economics with people-first economics.”

Clinton strategists believe this basic economic message can be what Clinton communications director George Stephanopoulos calls a “web issue”--the opposite of divisive “wedge issues” the GOP used in 1988--that is capable of pulling together voters from diverse racial and economic backgrounds and from different parts of the country.

The economic arguments, Clinton and his advisers believe, should work as well in both the industrial Midwest and California. How much time and money to spend in California, however, remains a key question for Clinton as his camp and the Bush team warily eye one another, each trying to figure out the other’s plans in the state before making firm commitments.

It is virtually a given that Clinton must win California, with its 54 electoral votes, to beat Bush. But the state’s huge size and the expense of television advertising in its various markets make it the political equivalent of a black hole that can suck in a campaign’s entire budget.

With polls showing Bush even weaker in California than elsewhere, Democratic strategists continue to debate whether they need to make an all-out effort in the state or whether a lower-budget campaign--freeing money for use elsewhere--might be enough to win.

GOP officials, for their part, ponder whether they can afford to make a full-scale effort in an expensive state where, at this point, many pollsters think Bush is doomed to lose. State GOP officials said Thursday that Bush planned to begin television advertising in California, but so far, no extensive purchases of time have appeared.

Clinton’s campaign built its current three-day California campaign swing, which ends today, around a traditional function for the state--fund raising. Friday, for instance, the San Gabriel stop was Clinton’s only public event--a fact that dismayed some campaign aides who wanted the candidate to take a more high-profile campaign stance in the final days before the GOP convention.

CLINTON IN SAN GABRIEL: Candidate delivers a broad-gauged and optimistic pitch to minority business leaders. A18