A Caveat for the Democrats

...Clinton thus needs to establish early on that he owes them nothing...

...Any comparable effort today would have to take a very different formfirst, because most voters say they prefer lower taxes to new programs, and second, because the number of unemployed people (7.4 per cent in October) is too low to have a big political clout...

...Moreover, whatever the differences between 1992 and the three preceding elections, Clinton's popular vote was remarkably consistent with that of other recent Democratic standard bearers...

...The bizarre '92 electoral year may well be no more than a brief interruption in the general pattern of Republican victories, more like 1976 than 1932...

...In 1992 Bill Clinton ran a nearly faultless campaign, brought home the Reagan Democrats and carried 32 states...

...For all the talk about the public's desire for change, the only change 62 per cent of the electorate really agreed on was his address...

...If there is a "new" Democratic Party with a broadened appeal, it has yet to capitalize on that appeal...

...Bill Clinton has been lucky, but there's a limit...

...Carter quickly discovered that this is easier said than done...

...The picture is murkier when it comes to the recently unemployed seeking jobs or the individuals semi-permanently on public assistance...

...Nevertheless, how much the Clinton Administration will be able to do without either raising the deficit inordinately or paying an unbearable price in political support remains uncertain...

...The loss was smaller than expected, given the Congressional check overdraft scandal...

...After all, Roosevelt never came close to ending the Depression in his first term, and he won re-election with over 60 per cent of the vote...

...The results of this month's Congressional contests reinforce the impression of an electoral landscape that either hasn't changed much or that continues to change slowly in favor of the Republicans...

...as usual, more than 90 per cent of Congressional incumbents who ran were re-elected...

...Clinton ran, as he said repeatedly, in the name of "the forgotten middle class" (a murky concept in itself), "the people who work hard and play by the rules...

...The biggest question in his political future, apart from the prospects for a general resuscitation of the economy, may be how far he can go in keeping these promises without alienating the white suburban voters who are demographically central to any successful Presidential campaign...

...The popular vote that a Democrat can expect seems to be largely unaffected by the identity of the nominee, the quality of the campaign, the state of the economy, or the number of significant alternatives appearing on the ballot (1980 also had three so-called major candidates...

...The conventional wisdom is that Clinton has to get the economy moving quickly...

...By contrast, the two Republican Presidential nominees in the same four elections had a much wider range, from 38 per cent (Bush in '92) to 59 per cent (Reagan in '84...

...Except in California, the much ballyhooed Year of the Woman failed to materialize (partly because, as in the past, those whose votes were affected by the abortion issue were overwhelmingly pro-life...

...From 1980 through '92, four separate nominees each won between 40 and 45 per cent of the popular vote...

...He did that by showing that he cared, not merely in personal terms but by starting a variety of programs that eased tensions and simultaneously contributed to the nation's infrastructure...

...On the other hand, he did promise urban leaders and civil-rights organizations that he would help the cities, minority groups and the poor—three entities that overlap but are far from identical...

...That, however, should offer little comfort to Democrats hoping to celebrate many consecutive Presidential victories...

...The Democrats, depending on the November 24 Georgia runoff, may gain one Senator...

...Democratic National Committee Chairman Ron Brown announced that the Republicans' "electoral lock" on the White House was "broken forever...

...The pattern has been even more persistent than that statistic indicates, for in just two of the 12 elections after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt has the Democratic nominee managed to get 50 per cent of the popular vote...

...It may be wrong...

...As House Speaker Thomas S. Foley of Washington and Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell of Maine emerge blinking into the sunlight after their enforced hibernation during the campaign, Clinton should remind them that Franklin Roosevelt vetoed more bills—passed by a Congress of his own party—than any other President in history...

...What would it involve, in 1993 and after, to revive the FDR aura and make the Democrats a Presidential majority party again...

...Changing those rules was not part of the package...

...Christopher Clausen, a previous NL contributor, is professor of English at Pennsylvania State University...

...The Republicans could self-destruct by handing their party over to the religious Right, which would make the task of creating a durable Democratic majority considerably easier...

...Whether Clinton would have won in a two-man race against an unpopular President in a depressed economy is something we will never know...

...That question is impossible to answer...

...It goes without saying, for example, that American cities are in bad shape and that carefully targeted programs to help rebuild them would be good public policy...

...The highest was Dukakis in '88, the lowest Mondale in '84...

...Neither did the longpredicted Massacre of the Incumbents occur...

...Probably what Clinton has to do fast is create confidence in the Federal government's ability to have a positive influence on the economy...

...Clinton will have to remember that he represents what he calls the new Democratic Party, and that most members of his party in Congress represent the old one...

...In the next few years we may feel fortunate to have a President who is both a master of wily politics and (the cliche has already caught on) a sophisticated policy wonk...

...Or, of course, it may not...

...The reality is that everything now depends on whether the victorious candidate governs like FDR or like Jimmy Carter...

...What we do know is that despite the incentives to get rid of George Bush, 19 million people preferred to vote for a crank billionaire rather than the nominee of the Democratic Party...

...Granted, there were three candidates in 1992...

...The narrow range suggests persistent demographic and ideological problems for the Democrats that transcend the strengths or weaknesses of particular candidates...

...The Democrats remain, as in all but one of the seven elections since Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 landslide, a distinctly minority party at the Presidential level...

...The only problem with his prophecy is that fewer people voted for Clinton than had voted for Dukakis four years earlier...

...we simply don't know enough yet to predict how the next few years will turn out...

...Tax changes to encourage investment, an emphasis on job retraining and other specific actions promised during the campaign should help instill a sense that someone is in charge who cares about the average wage earner and can get things done...

...The one thing the election demonstrated clearly was that most voters were tired of George Bush...

...On the contrary, the long Democratic dominance of Congress and the antiquated ideological positions so often expressed in its votes are a large part of the reason Democratic Presidential candidates have such trouble getting elected...

...In the House of Representatives they lost nine seats...

...Politically speaking, his interests are not theirs...

...But what kind of future are Democrats predicting when they congratulate themselves for having kept their House losses to a high single digit in an election that won them the Presidency for the first time in 12 years...

...If so, the Democrats might at last be on the road toward building a Presidential majority...

...To accomplish anything at all, President Clinton will have to make Congress do his bidding rather than bend (or worse, be seen as bending) to the demands of the Democrats there...

...It would be imprudent, though, to count on one's opponent to commit suicide...

...Slick Willy" could yet become a term of endearment, an admiring name for the right man in the right place at the right time...

...Ineptly led for many years and insulated by habitual re-election from many of the lessons of the last decade, Congressional Democrats will overwhelm the new President with demands for old-style Democratic programs—and will expect his acquiescence...