Liberals Stand Behind Clinton

Touching on a fissure that divides their party, leading liberal Democrats--including the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson--expressed disdain Tuesday for President Clinton’s compromise with Republicans on welfare reform but told delegates to the national convention that they must fight for Clinton’s reelection.

Jackson, echoing recent comments from other liberals gathered here for Clinton’s renomination, endorsed the president and spared him the kind of harsh criticism that would have roiled the celebration of party unity or embarrassed Clinton in a highly visible campaign forum.

“The last time we gathered in Chicago,” the preacher, activist and two-time presidential candidate said in prepared remarks, “high winds ripped our tent apart. We could not bridge the gap. We lost to [Richard] Nixon by the margin of our despair.

“In 1968, the tension within our party was over warfare. In 1996, it’s welfare,” Jackson said. “Last week, over the objections of many Democratic Party leaders and the opposition of millions of Americans, Franklin Roosevelt’s six-decade guarantee of support for women and children was abandoned. On this issue, many of us differ with the president.”

However, Jackson said, while Clinton’s reelection may seem unpalatable because of his concessions to reduce benefits to the poor, it is necessary to defend against worse evils from the Republican Congress.

“Sometimes,” Jackson said, “you have to play good defense before you get back on offense. . . . President Clinton has been our first line of defense against the Newt Gingrich contract [with America]; America’s right-wing assault on elderly, our students and our civil rights. . . . We must reelect the president and take back the Congress and stop the right-wing train in its track.”

“In 1996, Bill Clinton is our best option. The cross is on his shoulders,” he concluded.

Much of the convention’s second day was given over to speakers representing the party’s liberal wing. In addition to Jackson, they included former New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and abortion-rights activist Kate Michelman.

As these voices of a philosophy that Clinton has sought to subordinate were given the convention platform, White House officials announced new multibillion-dollar programs aimed at assuaging their concerns and their constituencies.

In the convention’s two final days, party leaders will shift the focus to issues and speakers that underscore the president’s top-priority effort to appeal to moderates and the middle class.

At a stop in Wyandotte, Mich., on his four-day train journey to Chicago, Clinton announced a $1.75-billion program to improve reading skills among schoolchildren. Later in the day, aides outlined a $3.4-billion program of assistance to cities to soften the blow of the welfare reform bill the president signed last week. They also previewed a $1.9-billion environmental initiative that Clinton will announce today to speed the cleanup of polluted industrial sites.

The convention’s evening schedule was revised several times during the day Tuesday to assure that the overall message of Democratic moderation and devotion to mainstream values would dominate the prime-time hour carried live by the television networks.

Dodd Touts Diversity

The Democratic Party chairman, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, said that Jackson and Cuomo were invited to speak to demonstrate that the party does not stifle dissent. He drew a distinction with Republicans, who he said stacked their convention to showcase only moderates and vetted every speech to assure that it toed the party line.

“No one’s going to be telling either one of them [Jackson and Cuomo] what to say. . . . We’re not afraid of having somebody stand at the podium and express a different view.” He said he expected Jackson to criticize Clinton’s decision to sign the Republicans’ welfare reform plan.

The final televised hour was to feature addresses by Tipper Gore, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and the keynote speaker, the young governor of conservative Indiana, Evan Bayh--who has been labeled a “Republicrat” by more liberal Democrats.

Bayh used his moment in the national spotlight to extol the president’s efforts to preserve the values of the heartland.

“They are the values that President Clinton has worked to restore to meet the challenges of our time: opportunity for all Americans; responsibility from all Americans, and a sense of community among all Americans,” the boyish Bayh said in prepared remarks. “But we must go beyond these historic gains because our progress has yet to touch all Americans. In quiet corners across our country, families still struggle to pay the mortgage, save for college, make ends meet.”

He praised Clinton’s signing of the welfare reform bill, saying it mirrored efforts that had been successful in Indiana in moving welfare recipients into jobs. “And, thanks to this president, we did it without orphanages or cutting health care or food.”

Emphasis on Families

Bayh and Tuesday’s other prime-time speakers hewed to the script written weeks ago for the convention’s second night. The stress was on families and the ways Clinton administration policies were designed to help them.

Tipper Gore stressed two of her pet concerns--stemming the flood of sexual and violent images in popular entertainment and broadening health care plans to include treatment for mental illnesses.

And she pleaded for more civility in the national political debate.

“I really believe, as I know you believe, that it is our responsibility to America’s voters to eliminate viciousness from our political discourse, to choose language that unites rather than divides, to disagree with decency and dignity, and to keep our sense of humor,” she said in her prepared remarks.

Gore introduced Hillary Clinton as “a woman who always maintains her grace, dignity and humor even while being subjected to unimaginable incivility.”

Delegates on Tuesday also approved the 1996 Democratic platform, a bland document that commits the party to a balanced budget and targeted tax cuts to make education more affordable. The party declared itself against crime and for abortion rights; against pollution and for gun control; against tobacco sales to children and for “meaningful health care.”

The Democrats afforded five minutes of Tuesday afternoon platform time to a stew of speakers covering an assortment of themes. Among the speakers were Californians Gloria Molina of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors; Mark Klaas, father of murdered Petaluma schoolgirl Polly Klaas; and businessman Justin Dart, son of one of the original members of former President Reagan’s “Kitchen Cabinet.”

Molina implied disapproval of Clinton’s signing of the welfare bill but said she trusted him to correct its more severe injustices.

Klaas called for tougher penalties for habitual sexual offenders and demanded reform of a criminal justice system “that just doesn’t work.”

The 65-year-old Dart, a prominent advocate for the disabled, spoke from a wheelchair, which he has used since being stricken with polio at age 48. He declared himself “a Republican for Clinton.”

The Clinton Train

Meanwhile, on the third day of his whistle-stop train tour through the Midwest, Clinton on Tuesday proposed to expand the federal government’s role to help children learn to read.

The literacy proposal, which would involve $1.75 billion in new money and $1 billion of already-requested money, would bring states, nonprofit organizations and the national service program together to hire 30,000 reading specialists and volunteers to provide after-school and summer tutoring for children in kindergarten through third grade.

The goal, Clinton said, was to have every child reading independently by the end of third grade. According to statistics provided by the White House, 40% of third-graders cannot read without the help of adults.

Addressing a crowd at a library in the factory town of Wyandotte, Mich., Clinton said the declining literacy rate among young children may arise from growing numbers of immigrant parents who don’t speak English, or because of the time constraints faced by parents who work two or three jobs to make ends meet.

“They need individualized tutoring, help with their homework and more parents involved in helping them read and keeping them reading,” Clinton said.

At an earlier stop, Clinton came under fire for his free-trade policies at a Toledo auto plant. Before several thousand workers at the Chrysler Jeep plant, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) complained about the battering that textiles, auto parts and other industries have taken because of the foreign competitors aided by U.S. trade policies.

She talked about the garment workers on the Lower East Side of Manhattan who have seen their business harmed, and “those 20,000 tomato workers in Florida who lost their jobs because of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“It’s a crime!” she declared.

Clinton, who rode the Toledo factory’s 2-millionth Cherokee after it came off the assembly line, did not reply directly to Kaptur’s challenge. But he contended that his administration had pursued a “fair trade” policy that stood up for U.S. workers and pointed out that the plant’s exports had risen from 17,500 Jeeps four years ago to 41,500 this year.

“When I became president, I decided we didn’t have the option to walk away from the trading world,” he said.

To pay for the new programs he is proposing this month, Clinton will ask Congress for 11 changes in taxes, fees and other revenue-raisers. Details are still unavailable on most, but aides promised that he would reveal them in his acceptance speech on Thursday night.

Times chief Washington correspondent Jack Nelson contributed to this story.