So Long, Senators

...Minnesota's Paul Wellstone and Wisconsin's Russ Feingold ran unconventional campaigns, Wellstone in 1990 and Fein-gold in 1992...

...My feeling is that when we run middle-of-the-road candidates who are trying to be Republicans, who are trying to fool the people by saying, ? happen to be a Democrat but I really am a Republican, so you can have your cake and eat it too'— then people will do what Harry Truman predicted when he said that, given a choice between a Republican and a Democrat who acts like a Republican, voters are smart enough to choose the real Republican...

...But that's what this 1996 election is going to decide...

...Candidates that are strong on individual rights, strong on human rights, strong on issues like not letting Medicare be unfairly gutted, resonate with people...

...I think that's precisely why Senator Wellstone and I were successful...

...What rarely gets mentioned is that neither of the Democrats who actually won the toughest of races was a favorite of the party...

...That we should go further than the law—be stricter with ourselves than is required...

...she asks...

...in fact, both admit they spent the critical first months of their campaigns literally introducing themselves to voters...

...It's better than what Dole's offering.' If we don't bother to make that distinction, why should people bother to vote for us...

...For the most part, Gramm is right...

...In fact, both began their campaigns as "sure losers" in the view of Democratic power brokers...

...Six additional Democratic Senators are considered highly vulnerable to Republican challenges, and several may quit rather than fight...

...In Arkansas, for instance, after Pryor announced that he would be retiring, state and national Democratic officials began scrambling to convince Clinton White House counselor and veteran corporate insider Mack McLarty to run...

...While Wellstone, Feingold, Moseley-Braun, and Murray were winning in 1990 and 1992, "big-league" Democrats such as New York Attorney General Robert Abrams and former Presidential candidate and North Carolina governor Terry San-ford were going down...

...Representative Blanche Lambert Lincoln, a Delta Democrat who represents the state's poorest district and made a name for herself by unseating a twelve-term incumbent when she ran a low-budget, high-energy campaign in the 1992 Democratic primary...

...They say thin checkbooks forced them to establish effective grassroots statewide organizations, and won them "regular-guy" credits with voters...

...Jim Hightower was the only one to do anything with it in recent years, but nobody seems to be tapping into it now...

...How do you combat that...

...The Senators themselves argue that, in some ways, they benefited from their lack of campaign funds...

...Party leaders have been recruiting traditional candidates, who are so compromised by their own insider status and by their obsession with fundraising that they are incapable of making the sort of populist appeals that build effective coalitions...

...Since 1990, only two elected incumbent Republican Senators have been defeated by Democratic challengers...

...It's different from what Newt's offering...

...Wellstone says that is precisely the stance Democrats should take into the critical 1996 Senate campaigns...

...And I think that until we start doing that in the South, Democrats are just out of luck...

...Their stories provide a lesson in how Democrats could retake the Senate—if the party leadership were willing to jettison its caution, as well as some of its fat-cat contributors...

...This is what we stand for...

...If that happens, the "you-ain't-seen-nothing-yet" fantasy of the Republican right could well become America's reality...

...If you're too wishy-washy, if you're just trying to be everything to everybody, it doesn't give people a strong reason to vote for you," he says...

...Five entrenched Democratic Senators— Howell Heflin of Alabama, Jim Exon of Nebraska, J. Bennett Johnston of Louisiana, David Pryor of Arkansas, and Paul Simon of Illinois—have announced their retirements, and all of their seats are pegged as vulnerable to Republican takeovers...

...The fault lies not in the stars, but with the Democrats themselves...

...But for the purposes of debate I would have to say that Newt Gingrich is an ultra-conservative rightwing nut...

...As a result, the Democrats are inviting a political disaster far more frightening than anything that occurred in 1994...

...It may well have been their lack of funds that actually appealed to voters who are turned off by big-money politics...

...M John Nichols, an editorial writer for The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin, covers electoral politics for The Progressive...

...In Arkansas, Alabama, and Louisiana, party leaders are already making disastrous missteps...

...Too many of the party leaders are steeped in the old notions of having to raise money from interest groups, of broad-brush moderate approaches, of very cautious economic policy, of trying-not-to-stand-for-anything is the only way to win," says Feingold...

...I think that voters see that sort of candidate as someone who has an understanding of what it is to be a little guy in this society...

...Moseley-Braun defeated a conservative Democratic Senator in her primary, while Murray defeated a well-known former Congressman...

...This Republican agenda is no less than an effort to overturn sixty years of people's history—it's very extreme, it goes beyond the goodness of people in the country, the contradictions are harsh and they're clear and apparent...

...Representative Lane Evans, a boyish former legal-services attorney from Rock Island, could well be the 1996 version of Wellstone and Feingold...

...Representative Billy Tauzin, another defeated gubernatorial candidate, who is so conservative that he has openly flirted with crossing the aisle to the Republican side...

...The Senate currently is split 54 to 46 in favor of the Republicans...

...Face it, the Republicans with an overwhelming majority in the Senate is a scary thought for a whole lot of Americans," says Senator Paul Wellstone, a progressive Democrat from Minnesota, who faces a reelection fight next year...

...While they slobber over Hartigan, the Democratic strategists, fundraisers, and professional hangers-on are shunting aside a candidate who could actually defeat the Republican nominee...

...Unfortunately, Democratic bigwigs seem to be making precisely the strategic and ideological mistakes that will give Republicans the votes they need to cut loose and seriously mutate our politics...

...As the initial debate over the balanced-budget amendment illustrated, the Democrats hold just enough seats to stave off the most horrific Republican onslaughts...

...Political pundits make a big deal about the fact that both men relied on devastat-ingly witty television commercials—a rare JORDIN ISIP commodity in Senatorial politics...

...It's really difficult to see how the Democrats don't end up losing some ground in the Senate in 1996...

...If the bottom drops out of Bill Clinton's reelection campaign, the Republicans could really start moving, and you could see them getting up to the sixty-seat level...

...That kind of populism is really what's fueling the right, but that same populism can turn away from the right in a minute if we have candidates out there talking about taking the side of the little guy in fights against big corporations...

...In fact, it's people that speak about real change who win...

...I could see where an institutional Democrat like Hartigan, with a little less fire in the belly, would spend more of his time on the defensive—especially in a year when the Republicans seem intent on coming on strong...

...Well-stone's variation on filmmaker Michael Moore's Roger & Me was the most talked-about commercial of the 1990 campaign, while ads featuring Feingold examining his closet and announcing "no skeletons in here" drew similar plaudits in 1992...

...I still think the conventional wisdom is that only certain types are the ones that can win...

...So, are Democrats there looking for a hot-blooded economic populist to step into Simon's shoes...

...Now that he has set his sights on Bill Clinton's job, Gramm confesses that—for all the bravado he brought to his old job— beating Democratic Senate candidates was actually a breeze...

...Heck, everybody knows Democrats don't know the first thing about winning Senate campaigns...

...The problem is that the conventional-wisdom candidates have been losing for us...

...Like Wellstone and Feingold, Moseley-Braun and Murray started out with little name recognition, almost no money, and no serious attention from party leaders...

...According to the Chicago Tribune, Hartigan, who is still licking his wounds from a shellacking in the 1990 Illinois gubernatorial race, is considering running for the Senate to establish a base from which to run again for the governorship in 1998...

...Their success with little money holds a lesson, says Deirdre Nice, a party official from Maine who serves as the progressive conscience of the Democratic National Committee...

...When McLarty said no, many of those same people busily tried to convince other potential candidates with close links to the state's powerful Stephens brothers banking empire...

...Party pooh-bahs in Washington, Chicago, and Springfield spent most of the spring stumbling over themselves in order to recruit former Illinois Attorney General Neil Hartigan—a man known even to his own supporters as something of a poster boy for plodding...

...We will never touch the South again if we don't do this," the Wisconsin Democrat said of the economic-populist approach he has recommended...

...The South is a place of great populism historically...

...But neither candidate had enough money to purchase more than a cursory showing of their most creative ads...

...We need candidates who make a strength of the fact that they aren't the wealthiest people around, that you don't have all the money, that you're not of the elite or the powerful...

...Feingold thinks the distinction lies in the willingness of the winners to run as unabashed progressives...

...I often say to people in my party that they should do things as regards campaign finance reform that aren't required by law...

...Fifteen Senate seats currently held by Democrats are up for election in 1996...

...And another electoral disaster like 1994 will rob Senate Democrats of their ability to block even the most destructive codicils of the Contract With America...

...Not Republican wizardry, nor fickle voting habits...

...It's an identification issue...

...If the Republicans hold their seats as they did in 1994, and if Democrats lose the seats of the five retirees and just one of the vulnerable incumbents, the G.O.P...

...Let's lay it right on the line...

...Feingold argues that the strategy of looking to traditional pols, political insiders, or wealthy "pay-your-own-way" candidates is precisely the wrong approach for Democrats, particularly in the South...

...The only obstacle to the Republican juggernaut is the coalition of Democrats and a handful of "moderate" Republicans who are not quite comfortable with gutting environmental protection, throwing poor children into orphanages, and redistributing income to the rich via a sweeping tax cut...

...they will come to us.' " In addition to stylistic factors, however, both Wellstone and Feingold suggest that their success can be traced to their substantive positions...

...It's time to challenge Republicans as forcibly as they've challenged the Democrats," says the Minnesota Democrat...

...That's not the ticket, says Nice, the Maine activist who worries that her party is being destroyed by ideological compromises...

...In state after state, however, Democratic party leaders are actively recruiting candidates in the conventional-wisdom mold...

...Before he became the great right hope of Presidential politics, the Texan chaired the powerful National Republican Senatorial Committee...

...A veteran political reformer and civil-rights supporter, defender of labor unions and family farms, and backer of single-payer health-care reform, Simon has proven that progressives can win in Illinois...

...Phil Duncan, who edits Congressional Quarterly's "Politics In America" publications, is one of a growing number of political observers painting ominous scenarios for the Democrats...

...will reach the sixty-vote plateau for the first time in eighty-five years...

...Until the final weeks of their respective campaigns, these two men ran without big money, without big endorsements, and without a prayer...

...All but lost in the initial discussion was U.S...

...Flashing the sort of grin snakes reserve for the moment before they devour small mammals, Gramm predicts great Republican gains in 1996...

...The response I usually get is, 'We'd die.' I say, 'No, if we take a stand, if we show that we're better than just what the law requires, people will be inspired...

...Just ask Phil Gramm...

...In 1994, every Democratic challenger lost, as did two incumbent Democratic Senators...

...The electorate is still volatile," says Congressional Quarterly's Duncan...

...The pundits don't always realize the sort of intangible, noneconomic value of that kind of candidacy," Feingold said of his primary effort, in which he was out-spent 6 to 1 and 4 to 1 by his two well-known opponents...

...The only question is how much," he says...

...I'm not a label person...

...That's why we have to get serious about it early...

...Adds Wellstone, "I don't think [Democratic insiders] get it yet...

...Elected in 1982 from a traditionally Republican district, Evans embodies the progressive populist ethic...

...I've said to groups of Democrats, both in Washington and in Wisconsin, that the only time our party has won since 1990 is when we have put together a clear alternative vision," says Feingold...

...On Gramm's watch, all eleven freshmen in the Class of 1994 Senators were Republicans—the first all-Republican group since 1914, when the direct election of Senators began...

...This is a significant moment in history...

...Both men ran as uncompromising economic populists who proudly sided with trade unionists and small farmers, condemned the growing concentration of wealth in America, supported Canadian-style, single-payer health-care reform, and told voters that corporate interests had no right to the best Senators money can buy...

...This is true on both our side and the Republican side—you notice it wasn't a bunch of real cautious people who got elected this last time on the Republican side...

...Neither had won statewide office before seeking their respective Senate seats...

...In fact, that's not the case at all...

...If you just think in terms of how many points of TV time you can buy, you're hung up, you don't understand what people are looking for...

...As such, they are patching together a slate of precisely the candidates Republicans want to run against—weak-kneed defenders of politics as usual, who are congenitally incapable of going head-to-head with a new generation of Gingrich-inspired, Limbaugh-quoting Republican fire breathers...

...Molly Ivins mentioned in a speech I recently heard her give that the Texas strain of populism is running just beneath the surface...

...Once they pass the sixty mark, Republicans will be able to ramrod their agenda through the Senate, and progressive Democrats will be all but powerless to oppose them with traditional tools such as filibusters...

...When everyone from Bill Clinton to Newt Gingrich was hooting this spring about "ending welfare as we know it," Evans turned the debate on its head with a bill calling for the end of "corporate welfare as we know it"—detailing an array of cuts in federal giveaways to big companies that he said cost the country far more than meager subsidies for poor kids...

...What is to blame for the current circumstance...

...Already, they are repeating the mistakes of the past...

...Of the eighteen Republican seats up for election in 1996, only one incumbent is stepping down—Hank Brown of Colorado—and no more than four incumbent Republicans are seen as vulnerable...

...We have to say, 'Hey, this is who we are...

...Even if the "moderates" weren't around, however, the arcane rules of the Senate would still provide some level of protection...

...You certainly do not combat that by moving closer to him and hoping you'll get a few crumbs...

...Yet, in these states as well, the push has been to recruit big-ticket candidates—such as U.S...

...The magic number for the Republicans is sixty seats, the amount they need to invoke "cloture"—the parliamentary trump card that allows the majority party to shut off debate and bring any bill to a vote...

...Take Illinois...

...When asked whether Democratic party insiders have been quizzing them about how to replicate the only winning formula the party has going for it, both Feingold and Wellstone answer no...

...So, I could see a Lane Evans being much more of a fighter—running from an underdog position...

...Senator Paul Simon, a relatively consistent progressive voice in the Senate, will be stepping down after two terms representing the Land of Lincoln...

...Republicans have consistently walloped Democrats in key Senate races since 1990, reversing the ten-seat deficit they faced that year...

...So what made lightning strike for this unlikely pair of candidates, when it has so obviously failed in the cases of better-known, better-financed Democrats...

...Not on your life...

...My view is that if Democrats can't take this on with a progressive populist politics, if we can't galvanize people back in our states, then, in the words of a great rabbi: 'If not now, when...

...It appeals to people on a gut level...

...Feingold notes that, while they did not defeat incumbent Republicans, two other upset winners for the Democrats, Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois and Patty Murray of Washington State, ran campaigns that were "unashamedly progressive...

...The scenario turns more frightening in the South, where Democrats have regularly been losing open seats to Republicans since the 1970s...

...As Democrats prepare for one of the most critical Senate campaigns in the Twentieth Century, it would seem only logical that party leaders such as Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, the reluctant chief of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, would be beating paths to the doors of Wellstone and Feingold, looking for the ideas that could help them retake control of the world's most exclusive club...

...He suggests that the 1996 election could leave the party in its worst shape since 1911...

...But while their offense is strong, the key to the Republican strategy has been a virtually insurmountable defense...

...In Louisiana and Alabama, states where African Americans make up 31 percent and 25 percent of the population, respectively, and where levels of unionization are significantly higher than in other southern states, the prospects for a progressive populist campaign would seem to be quite high...