Election Day Could Decide Clinton’s Fate in Congress

Neither party is yet framing the November elections as a referendum on whether President Clinton should remain in office. But that’s precisely what the vote may turn out to be.

With the House moving steadily toward an impeachment inquiry but polls showing large majorities of Americans continuing to oppose the president’s removal, the election results are likely to be a decisive factor in settling Clinton’s fate.

If Republicans make sweeping gains on Nov. 3, many GOP leaders undoubtedly will view the results as a mandate for pushing forward on impeachment in the House--and there will be fewer Democrats left to fight them.

But if the results don’t provide a significant lift for the GOP, the effort to force Clinton from office could lose much of its steam, analysts in both parties agreed.

“The election could very well be a pivotal point in this,” said GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio. “If there isn’t a massive defeat for Democrats, as there was in 1994, it is only going to embolden the Democrats, and it is going to give pause to more moderate Republicans.”

The elections’ potentially key role in the impeachment debate is placing Clinton and congressional Democrats in a position of unaccustomed interdependence.

Capitol Hill Democrats have often considered Clinton aloof to their electoral interests, but he now may be unable to save himself unless they run well. Conversely, congressional Democrats cannot undercut Clinton without risking losses that would allow Republicans to consolidate their hold on Congress until well into the next decade.

“If the numbers [of Democratic House members] drop below a certain point, we will have a hard time getting this place back for a long time, and that is in the back of everyone’s mind,” one House Democratic leadership aide said.

In both parties, the intersection of the volatile impeachment debate with the approaching elections is generating enormous uncertainty. Moods are rising and falling so rapidly in Congress that Capitol Hill these days resembles nothing so much as a high school in the weeks just before the senior prom.

“It’s incalculable as of today how this is going to play out,” Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon said. “Incalculable. There’s a very sour mood out there.”

In hopes of holding down their losses, the top Democratic congressional leaders, Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), have freed their colleagues to take whatever stance toward Clinton they feel is necessary to win reelection. So far, most have been content with sharply criticizing Clinton.

Among Republicans, relatively few candidates are emphasizing the scandal in their campaigns, and polls have shown that most Americans do not directly consider the elections an opportunity to register an opinion about Clinton. In a Times Poll this month, just 35% of those surveyed said their vote would be meant to send a message either for (21%) or against (14%) the president.

“It’s not like 1994,” said Fabrizio, referring to the surge in discontent with Clinton’s first years in office that cost Democrats control of Congress. “There’s less clear cut of a linking of candidates to this guy.”

But despite all that, the election results almost inevitably will loom over the next stages of the impeachment debate.

Double Danger for Clinton

The nightmare scenario for the White House is large losses in November--a Democratic collapse that gives the Republicans two dozen or more additional House seats and the five additional Senate seats they need for 60 members--the magic number for thwarting filibusters. Such a blowout would create two problems for Clinton.

Most immediately, it would give the GOP more votes for impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate since most Republicans elected this year likely will believe that they have been sent to Washington with a mandate to punish Clinton. A big electoral win might also make returning House Republicans more comfortable about voting for impeachment, despite polls showing that most Americans oppose it.

Perhaps even more important, many analysts in both parties believe an electoral wipeout would encourage Democrats to demand that Clinton leave office before he undermines the party’s prospects again in 2000.

Like many Republicans, Sen. Larry E. Craig of Idaho said that Democrats undoubtedly would turn on Clinton if they suffer large losses this fall. “They may say to him: ‘Get the hell out of town, and get Gore in place; get something positive in place,’ ” Craig said.

The next question is whether the elections are likely to produce big gains for Republicans. By historical standards, it should produce at least some gains for them. Only once since the Civil War has the party holding the White House not lost House seats in midterm elections. (That was in 1934 when Democrats gained even more seats in the first elections after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s landslide in 1932.)

The losses have been particularly severe in midterms during a second presidential term--the six-year itch that Clinton and the Democrats now face. In 1986, for instance, Reagan and the GOP lost eight Senate seats and control of the upper chamber.

Gauging Support Proves Difficult

For much of this year, Democrats had been optimistic that they might break the historical trend and gain seats in the House--perhaps even winning it back--while holding down their losses in the Senate. But hopes of regaining the House have faded steadily through the year as Clinton’s troubles dominated the news, and the Democratic push for sweeping tobacco legislation, managed care regulation and campaign finance reform failed to strike a public chord.

Then, in mid-August, after Clinton acknowledged an “inappropriate” relationship with former intern Monica S. Lewinsky, Republicans began talking about an electoral sweep, and many Democrats glumly agreed.

“The only thing that could save us from losing 20 to 30 seats,” one Democratic representative said to another recently as they sped to the chamber for a vote on the House subway, “is for [Clinton] to resign.”

But now, with Clinton’s approval rating remaining around 67% in polls late last week, the expectation cycle seems to be turning again, with many Republicans moderating their hopes and some of the panic among Democrats subsiding.

Though some in the GOP are still predicting larger gains, one senior Republican Party strategist said that the current best guess is that the GOP may gain eight to 12 seats in the House. Another top congressional GOP strategist said that, while polls show Republicans gaining strength in races for open seats, there is little evidence that Clinton’s troubles are weakening Democratic incumbents--a trend that would keep Republican gains to the eight- to 10-seat range.

Echoing these views, Mark Gersh, a top Democratic electoral planner, told the Democratic National Committee on Friday that the elections are likely to produce a normal midterm pattern, with Democrats losing no more than six or seven seats. If those predictions bear out, the GOP enthusiasm for impeachment is likely to diminish.

On the other hand, the Democratic position in the Senate looks worse, with the party at risk of suffering a net loss of as many as five or even six seats. It’s not clear how much of that could fairly be attributed to Clinton, since the most endangered Democrats--particularly Barbara Boxer in California and Carol Moseley-Braun in Illinois--have long-standing problems of their own.

But if the losses mount high enough, it may be difficult for the White House to avoid blame. “If Democrats lose big [in the Senate], people will tend to blame the president--whether that’s right or wrong,” said Sen. Herbert Kohl (D-Wis.).

For both parties, turnout is the key question. During the last month, a steady drumbeat of polls has indicated that Republicans angry at Clinton appear more likely to vote than Democrats: A Gallup Poll released Friday showed that 73% of Republicans are extremely or very likely to vote, compared with 63% of Democrats.

Yet Democrats see some glimmers of hope that a backlash against the threat to Clinton’s presidency may lend energy to their own political base. “What’s making me a little nervous,” one top GOP congressional strategist said, “is evidence that the other side may be getting fired up.”

That’s what it may take to keep the Democrats competitive around the country in November--and to keep Democrats in Washington from abandoning the president thereafter.

Times political writer Robert Shogan contributed to this story.

Full text of documents released from the Starr investigation and video of President Clinton’s testimony are on The Times’ Web site, at https://www.latimes.com/scandal