Way Down but Not Quite Out, The Democrats Regroup

By KURT ANDERSEN

Learning hard lessons and devising new approaches

The Democrats knew they were going to lose. They had time to steel themselves, to discount the loss and change the subject to 1988. Nevertheless, when the digital displays started flicking on Tuesday evening and the vote totals appeared, the thud of defeat was at last palpable. The party has now lost four of the past five presidential elections. It is being deserted by the nation's middle class and, perhaps even worse, by the young. One Democratic strategist, a key figure in the past four presidential campaigns, seemed almost excited by his own gloominess. "This party is in the worst shape of my lifetime! The worst since the Civil War! If the old forces hold on," he said of the Democratic Establishment, "this party is not going to hold together."

Are the Democrats really done for? They certainly have some fundamental kinks to work out. Their party is confused philosophically. What was long regarded as a grand coalition, the political expression of American pluralism for almost half a century, is now widely seen as a creaky conglomeration of self-interested constituency groups, alternately dithering and carping. The wholesale rejection of Walter Mondale, who tried to stitch the New Deal coalition together yet again, demonstrated both the weakness of that strategy and the dire nature of the party's condition. Bullied by interest blocs, the Democrats showed themselves without clear leadership and devoid of a solid ideological or geographical base.

But the defeat of Mondale is hardly the same as the demise of the Democratic Party. A solid majority of House members are still Democrats, as are two-thirds of the Governors and three-quarters of all other elected officials. Moreover, 43% of Americans are registered Democrats, including 5 million who enrolled just this year; only 30% are Republicans. "This kind of handwringing about the party is familiar and knee jerk," says Mondale Campaign Chairman James Johnson, refusing to see any general portents in Tuesday's terrible results. "It was a victory of personality far more than party." Clark Clifford, an astute party elder, is not fretting either. He recalls that four years after the Democratic rout of 1964, the Republicans took the White House, and that four years after the Republican rout of 1972, the Democrats took it back. "I've been in and around presidential campaigns for 40 years," says Clifford. "And every time there's been a landslide, people say the party that lost is through. Well, it doesn't happen that way, and it won't this time."

The cheeriest aspect of the party's future is that next time it will not be up against Ronald Reagan's personal alchemy. The optimists cannot just sit tight, however, and wait for Reagan to retire. The party must use the defeat to clear out its ideological detritus and find a confident voice that can inspire as well as admonish, that can make a majority of voters feel something grander than guilt. This week proved that merely sounding alarms--about the nuclear-arms race, the possibility of Social Security cutbacks, the decline of heavy industry, a diminished regard for civil liberties--is not enough to energize most voters, even when they share the concern. "There is a feeling that our party has become not a party of the whole," explains Virginia Governor Charles Robb, "but simply a collection of special interests that are narrower than the national interest."

When Franklin Roosevelt forged the Democratic coalition 50 years ago, the economic emergency was overwhelming; his remedies seemed synonymous with the national interest. Partly as a result of the federal programs he launched and the prosperity they permitted, however, the various interests within FD.R.'s coalition diverged. After unemployed workers and Dust Bowl farmers were back on their feet, they grew skeptical of Government assistance for the next waves of the unlucky and downtrodden. As blacks developed political consciousness and clout in the 1950s and '60s, many white Southerners stopped voting for Democratic presidential candidates, and when affirmative-action programs jeopardized white workers in the North, the F.D.R. coalition grew still shakier. While the party has lost its appeal for its traditionalist constituencies, it seems unable to generate compensating support among younger, go-go voters. People under 30, says one Mondale strategist, "have decided they're going to be Republicans. They think we're the party of failure and the Republicans are the party of success." In political terms, of course, such an image is self-fulfilling. Ethel Klein, a political scientist at Columbia University, agrees. Says she: "Their concern is economic opportunity for themselves. These are young adults who have no real memory of Viet Nam, and have a sense that a lot of the social and economic injustices of the past have been fixed."

The past: when Reagan summons it up, it is golden and glorious, the good old days. The Democrats, on the other hand, are often seen as stuck in a difficult past, obsessed with the Depression and the labor-organizing battles of the '30s and '40s, still transfixed by Great Society experiments. Michigan Governor James Blanchard owes his office largely to the support of the United Auto Workers, yet he believes that the Democrats ought not adhere to pet policy prescriptions simply out of habit. "We can't just defend the status quo," he says. "We can't get hung up on the ideology of yesterday." Progressivism, he seems to be saying, has to progress.

The new Democrats do not suggest a dismantling of the social welfare apparatus. But they believe a basic requirement should be that such programs work at reasonable cost. Says Wyoming Party Chairman David Freudenthal: "The social programs of the '60s were the right thing at the time, but now it's as if we're afraid to change even one piece of decoration on the house for fear someone will start yelling that we're trying to tear the roof off."

Plenty of factions are yelling already. The party has become Balkanized into a collection of interest groups, each pushing its parochial agenda singlemindedly. Hispanic organizations oppose the Simp-son-Mazzoli immigration bill? Then so does the Democratic Party. Unions want to limit imports of foreign automobiles? Then so does the party. "We are the accumulated wish list of all our constituency groups," says Colorado Governor Richard Lamm. Democratic Strategist Patrick Caddell, an adviser to the Gary Hart campaign last spring, has been screaming the same thing for years. "Instead of being just fiercely protective of particular interests, like women's rights," Caddell suggests, "the party must be far more assertive about national interests."

Hart's single most successful tack during the primaries was charging Mondale with lapdog allegiance to the AFL-CIO. The extreme affinity between organized labor and the Democrats has become a central political concern. Democratic leaders must convince organized labor that the shifts in the U.S. economy--away from heavy manufacturing toward high-technology and service industries--need not be antithetical to workers' long-run interests. "Labor has a massive job of self-education to do," says Iowa Party Chairman David Nagle. "Labor will have to weed its own garden."

Yet Robert Strauss, the party's former national chairman, fears that not even this week's trouncing will make willful interest-group leaders more accommodating and pragmatic. "The defeat will mean nothing to them," he says. "The hunger of these groups will be even greater. Women, blacks, teachers, Hispanics. They have more power, more money than ever before. Do you think these groups are going to turn the party loose? Do you think labor is going to turn the party loose? Jesse Jackson? The others? Forget it."

Part of the party's challenge is to realize a domestic vision that preserves the egalitarian ideal while promoting the prospect of individual opportunity and economic growth. Two Democrats at the forefront of such a strategy are New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley and Missouri Representative Richard Gephardt. They have proposed a simplified income tax plan that would eliminate all but a few personal deductions and lower significantly the rates for most taxpayers. Hart has talked about establishing individual training accounts for workers who are forced into new jobs.

The Democrats must also expand their geographical base from the Northeast and the industrial Midwest. Half the electoral vote now comes from the Sunbelt. In 1988, says Strauss, a Texan, "it can be a Southerner. It can be somebody from the Midwest or West. But he's got to be able to convince Southerners that he's a moderate and like them." The South and West have a similar self-conscious regional ethos, but this basic world view--a kind of do-it-yourself, four-wheel-drive populism--has adherents all over the country. "The West is not just geographical," says Floyd Ciruli, Colorado's Democratic chairman. "It's a state of mind: independent-thinking, optimistic, against special interests, environmentally sensitive. Until you have a candidate who can appeal to this way of thinking, you won't win the West, and you won't win the suburbs."

As neoliberal presidential prospects like Hart and Bradley help push the Democratic mainstream toward explicit pro-growth policies, educated youth may come wandering back over from Republicanism. On virtually all issues concerning personal liberty--abortion, women's equality, prayer in schools, the First Amendment--yuppies are in profound disagreement with the G.O.P.'s powerful Christian right wing. Southerners may be harder for the Democrats to recapture, but the party is no longer indulging in reflexive contempt for the military, for open displays of patriotism and for middle-class home-and-hearth values. Impressive Southern Democrats, notably Senators Sam Nunn of Georgia and Dale Bumpers of Arkansas, have built up substantial influence within the party.

A kind of chicken-or-egg disagreement persists over whether the Democrats first need a tidy political theme or an appealing candidate. Most insiders, however, seem to agree with California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. "The fact is," says Brown, "the platform makes a difference only after you have selected a leader--someone who wins confidence and demonstrates his ability to win. After that, you can talk about issues."

It is foolhardy to predict presidential front runners four years ahead of time, but New York Governor Mario Cuomo has definitely acquired an aura. "If you ask Republicans," says Political Consultant David Garth, "they'll tell you the one guy they're afraid of is Mario Cuomo." Cuomo is both well-spoken and magnetic, virtues no Democratic candidate since John Kennedy has combined. Because Cuomo entered politics only a decade ago, he was never obliged to acquire all the baggage of '60s Democratic orthodoxy; he thus has no invidious reputation to live down. Yet his instincts are probably closer to old-fashioned liberalism than to cool, calculating neoliberalism. "I'm intrigued by Cuomo," says Lamm of Colorado, "but his message has no hint that our economy is in trouble. All he says is that we are the party of compassion." Political Analyst Richard Scammon is dismissive. "Cuomo," he says, "is just a Mondale with charm."

Bradley possesses quieter charm, but he has acquired remarkable respect and influence in just one Senate term. His huge re-election margin this week will intensify talk of his White House ambitions, and any upcoming tax-reform battles will swing the limelight his way. But a New York political consultant thinks the former forward for the New York Knicks is unready to run. "There's not a natural move in his body, whether it's basketball or politics," says the adviser. "He works like hell, but he needs more time." Although some Democrats are still leery of Hart's personal quirkiness, he was more relaxed and rousing as a campaigner for Mondale this fall than he was last spring on the stump against him. Hart will soon file for re-election to the Senate from Colorado. But he has told friends he is inclined against running in 1986, TIME has learned, so that he can devote himself to a 1988 presidential attempt.

Other once and future stars will be struggling to shape the spirit and ideology of the party, if not perhaps to win its 1988 nomination. Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy will probably carry the flickering old liberal flame. Others have positioned themselves as potential leaders of the new breed. Among Governors, these include Lamm of Colorado, Bruce Babbitt of Arizona, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska and Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts. In the Senate there are Bumpers of Arkansas and Joseph Biden of Delaware.

The party of F.D.R. is still alive, but the coalition that he assembled seems almost incapable of winning national elections. For the first time in generations, the G.O.P is viewed as the party of change.

To arise from the debacle of 1984, Democrats must regain that distinction. Most now seem to realize that pointing to past achievements, no matter how glorious, is not enough. New ideas are a snap to disparage ("Where's the beef?"), but good new ideas are essential. "The shoe is on the Democratic foot," says Historian James MacGregor Burns. "The party must carry through the current process of realignment and formulate and fight for a clear, comprehensive alternative to Reagan rule." --By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Robert Ajemian/Washington and Kenneth W. Bantu/New York, with other bureaus

With reporting by Robert Ajemian, Kenneth W. Banta