Clinton Plays Underdog, Calls for Big Turnout

Democrat Bill Clinton, his longtime edge in the presidential race perhaps ebbing, played on the imagery of the underdog Thursday as he sought to ensure the big turnout that could be crucial to his success.

He labored across Ohio, Michigan and New Jersey--on the traditional stomping grounds of Democrats--calling on the image of the Kennedys and all but begging voters to come to the polls.

“As we come to the end of this campaign, I ask you to choose . . . to change the world we have, to have the courage to say we can do better, to reject the politics of denial, division and blame which the Bush Administration has visited on this country long enough,” he said in Detroit, where a multiracial audience applauded loudly.

While he visited strongly Democratic areas--a departure from his campaign pattern in recent weeks--Clinton was eyeing warily the apparent narrowing of his lead over President Bush in some public opinion surveys.

As he had on Wednesday, Clinton at times lashed out angrily at Bush. But his approach was two-pronged: In his public rallies Thursday, Clinton delivered somber and high-minded rhetoric, outlining with deliberation his policy differences with the incumbent.

But in casual comments to reporters, Clinton issued stinging criticisms of Bush. In sharply personal tones, Clinton all but accused Bush of lying.

“The American people see him for what he is, a desperate person who just wants to hold power and doesn’t give a rip for them,” he said in Toledo, Ohio.

Clinton has been aggrieved for days because of Bush campaign advertisements that the Arkansas governor says distort his record at home and his proposals for the nation. At one point Thursday, he maligned the President and said that he would “slam him home” in the days before Tuesday’s vote.

“He has put on ads all over America that are lies,” Clinton said early in the day. “The man has no core of conviction. This is not Harry Truman.”

Both Clinton and Bush have been competing as inheritors of Truman’s legacy throughout the general election campaign.

Although he displayed no overt nervousness about the polls showing the presidential contest to be suddenly tight, Clinton acknowledged Bush as a threat and independent Ross Perot as an unpredictable factor in the race.

“Anytime you’re an incumbent President and you just don’t have any standards, you have a chance to win, especially when Mr. Perot is spending anything to get elected,” he said.

He added: “We’re going to win this election. I have always thought I was the underdog, but I’m going to keep fighting.”

At rallies in Toledo, Detroit and Jersey City, N.J., Clinton played the underdog card with abandon while steering clear of the rancorously personal tone of his earlier comments.

As for his proposals for America, Clinton hewed to the relatively cautious course he has plied recently; a long-awaited speech on AIDS Thursday night in New Jersey was a compilation of previously announced proposals.

Clinton opened his day at the University of Toledo, where he accused Bush of “an abject denial of responsibility” in handling the nation’s affairs. Most of his discourse dealt with the economy, in keeping with his campaign’s belief that a continual drumming of the President on that subject will pay big rewards.

He roundly belittled Bush’s praise of positive economic statistics released earlier this week.

“In this Administration, for the first time since before World War II, you have a decline in jobs in the private sector and a decline in personal income,” he said. “So when Mr. Bush tells us that we should rejoice in our economic plight, I think we have to tell him it’s time to move beyond the passivity and complacency of his presidency and his campaign.

“A President who asks us to settle for less can’t bring out the best in us,” Clinton continued. “A President who’s out of touch with the people can’t take charge of our future. And when Mr. Bush looks at an anxious and frightened America and tells us that is as good as it gets, that says something worse about his presidency than anything I could ever say.”

The governor took pains to defend himself against Bush’s criticisms, specifically a charge by the President that Clinton’s call for “change” would leave only that--change--in American pocketbooks.

“It’s a funny line, but it isn’t true,” Clinton said. “I wouldn’t do that.”

For the Democratic campaign, turnout increasingly looms large as a key to victory in Tuesday’s election. It also accounts for the subtle change in strategy by Clinton.

Until recently, the candidate had spent much of his time in Republican areas, in states that have been the GOP’s domain in recent elections, zinging the President and hoping to peel off Bush’s support with a message pitched to moderates.

But on Thursday, it was back to the constituencies that have historically proved loyal to Democrats--the urbanites.

“You see all these pundits talking about how this election is gonna come out? What they’re really saying is the young won’t really vote, the working poor won’t really vote, the blue-collar people will get divided and distracted. People will give up on their future,” Clinton told several thousand people gathered in Detroit’s Cobo Hall.

There, Clinton turned to a symbol of the civil rights movement, Rosa Parks, to plead his case.

“We must vote in large numbers in order to make the great changes needed in our country today,” said the woman who helped fuel the battle for civil rights when, 37 years ago, she refused to take a seat in the back of a bus. “We cannot afford to continue to be in the condition that we are in. . . .”

Clinton, coming to the podium a few minutes later, paid tribute to Parks and said her experience should serve “to remind us that we are one people . . . that we must go forward together or we will sink divided.”

Clinton commonly expresses faith that he will win the election by professing that he is on “the right side of history,” that the vast changes that have taken place in the world since the Cold War ended represent a sterling opportunity for a Democrat.

On Thursday, however, he tried to use history in a more specific way. In Michigan, he recalled the words of Robert F. Kennedy, assassinated in 1968 as he sought the Democratic presidential nomination. And in Toledo, the words he quoted were from another Democrat who won a tight presidential race, John F. Kennedy.

In the last week of the 1960 election, Clinton said, Kennedy asked voters to cast their ballots based not just on the candidates, but on their personal concerns.

“I believe we want leaders to challenge us, not just make up charges at election time,” Clinton said. “I believe that we want to be told again that the only limit on what we can do is what we are willing to ask of ourselves, and what our leaders are willing to insist on of themselves.”

Why Clinton Is Still the Favorite

Is Bill Clinton ahead by 2 points, 7 points or 10 points? Over the past few days, polls have diverged on the size of Clinton’s national lead over President Bush and Ross Perot. But state-by-state surveys show that Bush still must thread the eye of the needle to win reelection.

Clinton ahead in 24 states: To win the White House, a candidate needs 270 electoral votes; the candidate who receives the most votes in a state gets all that state’s electoral votes, regardless of his margin. In the latest compilation of state surveys by the Hotline, an electronic newsletter, Clinton holds a lead outside of the polls’ margins of error in 24 states with 274 electoral votes--enough to win on Tuesday. Bush holds a clear lead in only three states, with a total 14 electoral votes. Perot leads in no states. In the remaining states, either no candidate holds a lead greater than the margin of error in the most recent surveys or polls conflict.

Warning: This data comes with some bright red caution flags. The quality of state polls varies considerably; and the Hotline notes that the surveys in 32 states are at least a week old--and thus do not reflect the narrowing of the race over the past week. The fact that both Clinton and Bush, for example, are devoting so much time to Ohio this week suggests it may be closer than the roughly 10-point advantage two surveys gave the Democrat this week.

The challenge for Bush: But those caveats don’t change the fundamental challenge for Bush. To catch Clinton, the President must win almost all of the battleground states--from Texas, Louisiana and Florida in the South, to New Jersey and Michigan in the North--and reclaim at least some states now believed to be leaning toward Clinton, such as Georgia and Ohio.

White: Clinton

ARK. 6, CALIF. 54, HAWAII 4, ILL. 22, MD. 10, MASS. 12, MINN. 10, MO. 11, N.M. 5, N.Y. 33, ORE. 7, R.I. 4, TENN. 11, VT. 3, WASH. 11, W.VA. 5, COLO. 8, CONN. 8, KY. 8, MONT. 3, WIS. 11

Black: Bush

IDA. 4, NEB. 5, UTAH 5

Gray: Where candidate leads above the margin of error in the most recently published state poll--the number of electoral votes

DEL. 3, MICH. 18, N.J. 15, IOWA 7, PA. 23, ME. 4, IND. 12, KAN. 6, MISS. 7, N.D. 3, OKLA. 8, S.C. 8, VA. 13, WYO. 3, ALA. 9, ALASKA 3, ARIZ. 8, FLA. 25, GA. 13, LA. 9, NEV. 4, N.H. 4, N.C. 14, OHIO 21, S.D. 3, TEX. 32 Source: The Hotline