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                                                                                NATION, Page 20

POLITICS

Sweet Smell of Success


With two big Rust Belt victories and Tsongas out of the race,
the nomination is Clinton's to lose. Now he faces a tougher
challenge: proving he can beat Bush.

By JON D. HULL/CHICAGO -- With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett/
Washington and Jordan Bonfante/Los Angeles


    Bill Clinton is the first Democratic presidential
contender since Jimmy Carter to attract black voters without
alienating blue-collar whites. He is popular among women, union
members, veterans and the unemployed, both North and South. He
talks tough on welfare without criticizing the poor and supports
the death penalty without turning off liberals. He has a strong
organization, loads of powerful friends, a lightning mind and a
damage-control system that could have kept the Titanic afloat.
He trounced his remaining two rivals so badly during crucial
primaries in Illinois and Michigan last week that Paul Tsongas
suspended his campaign, leaving only Jerry Brown still snapping
at his heels. And while he has seven more months to prepare for
the November election, polls already show Clinton running dead
even against George Bush.

    Not bad for a candidate who nearly knocked himself out of
the race only a month ago.

    "We've got the fat lady tapping the mike, getting ready to
sing," says Paul Tully, political director of the Democratic
National Committee. Yet Clinton's latest victories do not
guarantee that his road to the nomination will be a ceremonial
stroll. Plenty of Democrats fear his campaign may be doomed when
he squares off against Bush, and the fat lady is no fool. Even
as he pummeled his opponents at the polls, Clinton has been
dogged by questions of electability. In the fall, as Republicans
go knock, knock, knocking on Clinton's closet door in search of
another lady in red, those questions will return with a
vengeance.

    That prospect is excruciating for a party long cursed by
fatally flawed standard bearers. "The idea that a misplaced love
letter could keep us out of the White House for another four
years makes me ill," says a Democratic fund raiser in Chicago.
Clinton's defenders take comfort in the fact that their
candidate has survived months of scrutiny by the press and
voters. "He's got presidential stature, and he's convinced a lot
of people that he can win," says Ed Scribner, president of the
Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO. "When he started out, there were
some problems with his private life, but I think most people in
our union look at that as a private matter and do not think it
takes away from his ability to run this country." But that
reasoning ignores the fact that Clinton has yet to face the
toughest character test of all: a multimillion-dollar assault
by the Republicans.

    Even before that struggle begins, Clinton has to shake
Brown from his pant leg, or at least figure out how to prevent
the former California Governor from drawing too much blood
between now and the nomination. Tsongas' departure enables
Clinton to quicken his march to the nomination; he already has
nearly half the 2,145 delegates he needs, while Tsongas has 430,
and Brown 129. But unlike Tsongas, Brown can't be starved out
of the race, because he lives off the land, foraging for petty
cash with his 800 number. He vows to wage an insurgent war for
"the soul of the Democratic Party" in the remaining primaries
and caucuses, painting Clinton as a political insider and
protector of the status quo. "If you feel things are more or
less O.K., that's Bill Clinton," says Brown. "If you feel that
this country is decidedly on the wrong track, this is your
campaign."

    Clinton would just as soon ignore Brown's increasingly
shrill attacks and prepare for the general election by
emphasizing centrist political ideas that appeal to a broader
spectrum of voters. At strategy meetings in Little Rock last
week, the candidate and his aides prepared to launch a series
of major policy speeches intended to restore his pre-scandals
image as a new-thinking statesman who can lead a "majority for
change" with his blend of populist and neoliberal ideas. Until
Tsongas dropped out, Clinton had played down such notions,
stressing instead his support for a middle-class tax cut that
the former Massachusetts Senator decries as shortsighted and
wasteful.

    But without Tsongas to play against, Clinton will be
hard-pressed to ignore Brown's lowball attacks, especially since
Tsongas' departure gave Brown an instant boost in stature. He
is now positioned as the only visible alternative to Clinton,
rather than just a noisy sideshow for dyspeptic interest groups.
While Tsongas complained that he lacked the funds to compete
effectively in New York's costly media market, his withdrawal
assures Brown near blanket press coverage for the April 7
primary. In a two-way race, the state's vast and voracious press
corps will gobble up Brown's frenzied attacks against Clinton.

    Brown can't beat Clinton, but he can bruise him badly,
doing the dirty work for the Republicans all the way through the
convention. Brown's badgering under the klieg lights of New York
is likely to be just a warm-up for California, Brown's
stronghold and the probable grand finale of his revolt. Says
Erik Schockman, an election expert at the University of Southern
California: "If there is not a successful summit between Clinton
and Brown before the California primary, you're going to have
a bloodbath." Willie Brown, Democratic speaker of the California
assembly, warns that Clinton could face an embarrassing defeat
at Brown's hands in the June 2 primary.

    Even that would not be enough to deny Clinton the crown.
But to beat Bush, he must overcome nagging doubts about his
character, cobble together an ungainly alliance of constituency
groups and then get them to the polls in massive numbers. The
trick, which no Democrat has performed since Carter's election
in 1976, is getting blacks and whites to remain in the same
tent. Since 1980, Republican presidential candidates have
enjoyed a critical advantage over Democrats by pushing racial
hot buttons at a time when violent crime, affirmative-action
programs and a swelling underclass convinced millions of white
middle-class voters that liberalism did not work. One
consequence: during Super Tuesday's primaries two weeks ago, a
majority of whites voted Republican in Mississippi, Georgia and
South Carolina for the first time.

    In a TIME/CNN poll this month, which ranked Bush and
Clinton even at 43%, Clinton was backed by 70% of black voters
but only 40% of whites. Those numbers spell defeat for Clinton
if voter turnout is low. To prevail in November, he needs to
lure back blue-collar Reagan Democrats and capture suburban
middle-class independents while retaining strong support among
blacks and Hispanics.

    So far so good. Clinton has won an impressive 80% of the
black vote in the South and about 70% in Illinois and Michigan.
"There was a general view that you could no longer get
working-class blacks and whites behind the same leader," says
William Julius Wilson, a black sociologist at the University of
Chicago. "But that's what he's done. He's been able to bring
back disaffected whites who voted for Reagan while holding on
to minorities and the poor."

    Unlike either his Democratic or Republican rivals, Clinton
knows how to court blacks, even allowing pauses for the "amens"
when he addresses black congregations. Following a Clinton
speech at Morehouse College in Atlanta last month, student
Nelson Williams, a senior, said, "He understands the
African-American community. He grew up in an environment where
there was segregation, and he had an opportunity to see what it
can do firsthand." But Clinton has also shown some strength
among blue-collar white Democrats who defected to Reagan and
Bush. In Michigan's Macomb County, a stronghold of Reagan
Democrats, where race baiting and welfare bashing have proven
politically effective, Clinton told voters, "Let's forget about
race and be one nation again. Most black people work for a
living, and more white people than blacks are on welfare."
Macomb County whites rewarded him with 26% of the total vote,
compared with 28% for Bush. "Clinton more than any other
candidate articulates middle-class issues," says Leo Lalonde,
chairman of Macomb County's Democratic Committee. "If you put
in a request for a presidential candidate from central casting,
they would send you Bill Clinton."

    But Clinton's biracial coalition is fragile, and his
support nationwide remains shallow. Despite the endorsements he
is getting from Democratic leaders, more than a third of
Clinton's supporters in Illinois and nearly half in Michigan
expressed reservations about their candidate. Clinton's biggest
worry is that so far most voters have simply stayed away from
the polls. In such crucial states as Texas, Florida and Georgia,
the turnout in the Democratic primaries was markedly smaller
than four years ago. In Louisiana only 380,000 people voted in
the Democratic primary this month, compared with 624,000 in
1988. Low turnout among blacks is largely due to Jesse Jackson's
absence from the campaign trail for the first time since 1980.
These numbers suggest that Arkansan Clinton might have a
difficult task winning many of the 14 Southern and border states
that Jimmy Carter won in 1976. Unless Clinton catches fire by
November, his coalition could crumble. Says Democratic pollster
Peter Hart: "In a year like this, given the economy, if we can't
get people to participate, we're in trouble. The Republicans can
win by default if the trend continues."

    With Clinton's nomination now all but assured, most party
leaders feel obliged to put aside their concerns about his
electability and fall in behind him. Says Maryland state
chairman Nate Landow: "If there is any lingering doubt or fear,
and it's projected to the electorate, that will be very
damaging." But the public has nagging doubts of its own, and
polls show that Democrats who think Clinton will win his party's
nomination are also more likely to believe that Bush will
triumph in the fall.

    Ironically, both Clinton and Bush are encumbered by
strangely symmetrical flaws that could prove a wash among
voters. For every Democrat offended by the likelihood that
Clinton broke his wedding vows, there is probably a Republican
infuriated that Bush broke his "no new taxes" pledge. Assuming
Clinton doesn't self-destruct over the next seven months, real
issues rather than rumors might just determine the election. In
that case, the outcome in November may well hinge on which
proves stronger: Bush's economic recovery or Clinton's new
coalition.