Rust Belt Democrats Get a Clinton Wake-Up Call : Elections: President visits states with lackluster Senate races to stem apathy among party faithful. Trying to win converts is seen as futile.

Detroit’s unions, churches and the local Democratic machine assembled a large and raucous crowd for a political pep rally here Tuesday designed to inject some enthusiasm into the party’s desperate effort to retain a key U.S. Senate seat.

With interest in the race waning among Michigan Democrats, President Clinton arrived in hopes that his presence would give political impetus to the faithful and lure the apathetic to the polls Tuesday.

Later in the day, he went on a similar mission to Cleveland, where he implored an audience at a packed African American church to shed their torpor, show up at the polls and bring all their friends.

“You are in control,” he told listeners at the Antioch Baptist Church on Cleveland’s east side. “You will be in control whether you vote or don’t because, if you don’t vote, that’s a decision too.”

Democratic analysts said the party’s best hope of averting electoral disaster nationwide Tuesday is to assure that reliable Democratic voters show up at the polls. Trying to win over moderate Republicans and independents appears futile at this point, most analysts say.

So Clinton has spent the last two days preaching to the Democratic choir in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio.

In Michigan on Tuesday, Clinton tried to tip the balance in favor of Democratic U.S. Rep. Bob Carr, who is locked in a tight contest with Republican Spencer Abraham for the seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Donald W. Riegle Jr.

Polls show Carr trailing by a margin of from 2 to 12 percentage points and Democratic officials here said the race likely will hinge on turnout among Democrats and liberal-leaning independents.

In Ohio, Clinton was hoping to lend a hand to Democratic Senate candidate Joel Hyatt, who is badly trailing Ohio Lt. Gov. Michael DeWine.

Most Democrats consider Hyatt a lost cause and are conceding the Senate seat now held by his father-in-law, Democrat Howard M. Metzenbaum, to the Republicans.

But Clinton’s appearances in Cleveland and Detroit were not really about Carr or Hyatt or the other Democratic candidates who shared platforms with them.

Clinton scheduled his appearances Tuesday with a broader purpose in mind.

After visits to Philadelphia and Pittsburgh on Monday, Clinton’s pilgrimages to Rust Belt Democratic strongholds signal that the President believes his most useful role at this late date is to motivate the Democratic base, rather than trying to expand the party’s appeal.

Thus, in his rhetoric, Clinton has returned to a more traditional Democratic appeal, stressing the pain that Republican economic policies caused in the early 1980s and promoting middle-class entitlements like his student loan program.

The President’s message this week, as he stumps in nearly a dozen critical states before Election Day, is that the country is on the right track and that the Republicans are spreading despair and trying to fool voters with phony numbers and false promises.

“Their program, my fellow Americans, is to keep everybody shouting, keep the country in a turmoil, keep the people upset,” Clinton told 2,000 cheering party regulars jammed into a room at the Cobo Convention Center in Detroit.

“But the country is in better shape than it was 21 months ago,” Clinton said.

“Don’t let them sucker you. Keep going where we’re going. Show up on Election Day.”

Stanley B. Greenberg, his pollster and political adviser, said Tuesday that Clinton is now presenting an image of a more confident and capable leader, after foreign policy successes in Haiti and the Middle East.

The party’s prayer, Greenberg said, is that this new self-confidence “will lead to voters having more faith in the ability of Democrats to govern.”