Campaign Jitters

No modern-day sitting Vice President has ever been denied the nomination of his party, so Gore is seen as a virtual lock for the nomination. Democratic insiders hope that if the economy keeps humming along, the 2000 election will be a Democratic version of 1988: Gore as George Bush, a weak candidate elected in a decent economy in the wake of a popular, if tarnished, two-term President, with the benefit of a divided opposition.

Yet even devout Clintonistas are nervous about the Gore candidacy. Gore is a better speaker than most people realize, but he exudes none of Clinton's remarkable affinity for people. If Clinton is the caring nurse who feels your pain, Gore is the busy dentist likely to cause you pain. When Clinton proposes token gestures in healthcare or childcare, people assume that he cares. When Gore does it, they just may conclude he doesn't have a clue about the extent of the problem. To borrow Pat Schroeder's famous sobriquets for Reagan and Bush, if Clinton is Teflon, Democrats fear that Gore may be Velcro. He was tarnished much more than Clinton for a much smaller role in the campaign finance scandals of 1996. And the inquisition that seems to have lifted Clinton up may weigh Gore down. If Republicans nominate one of their "compassionate conservatives"--a Bush, Dole, even Quayle--the upscale independents whom the DLC celebrates may decide that 2000 is a good time to put the recent Democratic unseemliness behind them. And if the economy slows and the Democratic base grows more cynical, Gore may just have too much baggage to overcome.

No one knows how Gore will present himself. Clinton always campaigned far more populist than he governed. Gore would surely be wise to run not on the Republican-lite imitation of the DLC but on a more populist agenda that appeals to working families. Gore rouses labor audiences with a great speech on the right to organize, but his presentation to the DLC convention, billed as a test run of presidential themes, was so vacuous as to be incomprehensible. He embraced "practical idealism." When Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Dick Polman pressed a Gore aide to explain what that could mean, he got an answer of such incoherence that his editors accused him of trying to burlesque the Vice President.

The Progressive Challenge

With the conservative era running on empty, it is time to challenge the limits of the current debate. A broad mobilization by labor, consumer and environmental groups has frustrated the corporate trade agenda--defeating fast track, sinking the Multilateral Agreement on Investment and forcing labor and environmental conditions back on the Administration's docket. A coalition including labor, minorities, women and seniors came together to oppose any attempt to privatize Social Security and has begun to wean the President away from the notion. Progressives have led the fight against the right-wing inquisition and have consolidated the hold of liberal social values--civil rights, choice, environmental protection, greater tolerance--on mainstream opinion. Successful living-wage and campaign finance fights have been fought at the local level.

Inevitably, much of this has been defensive. One way to lay out a different direction would be a presidential primary challenge to carry the argument to millions of Americans. If this economy falters badly, 1976 may be more instructive to progressives than 1988. Two decades ago, as stagflation was discrediting the liberal era, a rising conservative movement pushed for political power. Ronald Reagan challenged a sitting Republican President, Gerald Ford, in the Republican primaries. Reagan carried the conservative agenda into the primaries--assailing détente and alleged US weakness abroad (using the Panama Canal treaty as metaphor), decrying the decline of families and values, and putting forth an agenda of growth through deregulation, tax cuts and monetarism.

Reagan almost beat Ford, who then lost the general election. Democrats controlled everything--White House, Senate and House--but conservatives won big. In two years, Carter was enacting much of the Reagan agenda: monetarism, a cold war revival, increases in military spending, the dismantling of corporate regulation. In four years, Reagan was in the White House, Republicans took the Senate and a dispirited Democratic House deferred to the new President's conservative program.

In 1976 conservatives were sufficiently convinced of the power of their cause that they were willing to challenge a sitting President of their own party and risk letting Democrats win everything. Are today's progressives prepared to take a similar risk in 2000--challenge the agenda and the candidacy of a sitting Vice President of their own party, even at the risk of losing the White House and the Congress to Republicans? With Senator Paul Wellstone out of the race and Representative Dick Gephardt unlikely to get into it, the question may be moot, unless Jesse Jackson decides to run. But whatever Jackson decides, the leaders of much of the activist base of the party--unions, women's groups, civil rights and minority groupings, environmentalists--have already indicated their aversion to a divisive battle in the primaries.

Even if progressive leaders are reluctant to oppose a Gore candidacy they have no choice but to mount a clear and aggressive challenge to the limits of the Administration and Gore agenda. "We saved the President," says Representative Barney Frank, "not Joe Lieberman. People across the country know that. Now we need to lay out where we stand. The White House may be more responsive than people think. If not, let's have the fight out in the open. We can come together later against the right." That may not be much, but it makes a whole lot more sense than the conventional wisdom.

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