Left out: liberals stayed out of sight at the Democratic convention, but they are waiting in the wings.

Liberals stayed out of sight at the Democratic convention, but they are waiting in the wings.

THE Democratic Party's television production in Chicago is over, and since it was a Dick Morris - orchestrated family-values funfest, whatever politics took place during the four days occurred outside the new United Center arena. And those politics took place on the political Left. Polls, such as the recent New York Times/CBS News poll, have consistently noted that the delegates to the Chicago convention were unrepresentative not only of the population at large, but of most registered Democrats. While only 16 per cent of voters at large, and 27 per cent of Democrats, describe themselves as liberals, a whopping 43 per cent of delegates to the Democratic convention so describe themselves.

These liberals were anything but happy with the path taken by Bill Clinton. Had they had their way, the President would, for example, have vetoed the welfare-reform bill. But the liberals at the convention were in the uneasy situation of having to sit on their haunches and cheer the President, who gave them platitudes and bromides, and urge his election anyway.

The liberal delegates were treated to two of their favorites, Jesse Jackson and Mario Cuomo -- but their speeches were slated for the 7 P.M time slot, so that the prime-time network audience would not be subjected to their old-style liberalism. Jackson, asking the audience to hold their applause, told them that they were using up his prime-time television space; nobody, it seems, had told Jackson that prime time begins after 9 P.M. Cuomo, meanwhile, used his time to plead with the liberal base of the party to help get the President re-elected, since if the Republicans won, it would only be worse for them. Neither Cuomo nor Jackson had the temerity to say publicly what they privately thought: that Bill Clinton had adopted the Republican agenda, and had in one fell swoop begun to tear apart the entitlement state that went back to the New Deal.

If one reads the first reports, liberal and conservative journalists seem to differ wildly. Writing in The Weekly Standard, David Brooks concludes that the centrists in the Democratic Party have won, despite the Left's grassroots organization. Clinton ended the most basic entitlement, Brooks writes, "and a few weeks later, 3,400 liberal delegates cheered him on." Hold on a minute, seems to be the contrary message from the historian and journalist Sean Wilentz, who reports in The New Republic that judging from the numerous rallies and gatherings of the Left, "the Democratic Party's traditional labor - liberal spirit seemed undimmed." Wilentz joyously notes how outside of the actual hall, "one kept bumping into throngs of die-hard party liberals and leftists."

True, the Left was in an unusual predicament. Crossing their fingers, they did indeed cheer the President, and while candidly noting their dissatisfaction with the welfare-reform bill -- a dissatisfaction they assured us the President shared -- they kept to their part of the bargain. They could appear at the convention itself, but only to endorse and urge unconditional support for the ticket, in the hope, as Wilentz would have it, that after victory, Clinton "would move leftward."

But on this hope, they would not leave things to chance. The key caucus event was called by the new political umbrella group on the Left, The Campaign for America's Future. At the Hilton Hotel and Towers, the same hotel where Tom Hayden was tear-gassed in 1968 and now was staying, a large group assembled on the convention's second day to hear Rep. David Bonior (Mich.), Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (Ill.), Rep. Rosa Delauro (Conn.) -- the wife of Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, Rep. Maxine Waters (Calif.), Senator Byron Dorgan (N.D.), Machinists' Union president George Kourpias, and writer Jeff Faux, whose new book, The Party's Not Over, is something of a manifesto for the would-be rising left-wing of the party. Led by a Jackson advisor Bob Borosage, the campaign clearly aspires to become the ginger group of the party's left wing. Judging from its performance in Chicago, it has a long way to go.

For one, its speakers can't seem to get their act together. Borosage opened by noting that because the Clinton Administration had performed so well the economy was in good shape. America had seen low inflation, declining deficits, and the creation of ten million new jobs. Democrats had to hammer home the message that the Republicans' economic policy was based on the fallacy of obtaining tax cuts for the rich. When Jeff Faux began his talk, however, he seemed to contradict directly Borosage. The financial stress facing the middle class, according to Faux, is so severe, and the economic situation so bad, that it is bound to be to the Left's political advantage.

What Borosage, Faux, and their followers were really attacking, however, was not the Republican Right but rather the small and beleaguered group of Democrats who were desperately trying to rethink old shibboleths, and whom Faux in particular accused of wanting to make the Democratic Party "more like the Republicans." It was these Democrats who were arguing that the working class had moved to the suburbs, were sending their children to college, and were now opposed to old-style redistributionist economic policies. They were, of course, those unnamed New Democrats, those who were corrupting the traditional message by being pro-business and in favor of less government, but who were liberal on social issues such as abortion.

They are talking, of course, about the Democratic Leadership Council and its think-tank, the Progressive Policy Institute, which held its own three days of intensive and well-attended workshops. One could not help being impressed by the quality of the presentations given by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Conn.), Will Marshall, William Galston, and Sen. Bob Kerrey (Neb.). What they argued was precisely the opposite of what the Campaign for America's Future argued. Instead of more class warfare and an attempt to continue redistributing wealth through new social programs, higher taxes, and an alliance with the newly radicalized AFL - CIO leadership, DLC speakers favored such measures as school choice and expanded charter schools (precisely the kind of educational reforms bitterly opposed by the two teachers' unions that are closely tied to Clinton), a new tax code, and above all, a severe restriction on entitlements, including Medicare and Social Security -- the two untouchables.

How, for example, does one fix the welfare bill the President just signed? The Left would favor a program of government-sponsored public works -- a New Deal for the New Century -- while the DLC types prefer finding jobs for welfare recipients in the private market. Unlike the Left, the DLC members are wary of federal programs, favor reliance on the market, and as Galston made clear in a brilliant speech about the importance of values and traditional education, are more than aware of how the culture at large with its assault on traditional values has harmed the body politic. Galston even argues against no-fault divorce laws, a stand that has not exactly endeared him to the old-style cultural Left.

Here is where the crunch comes, and the Left gains its hope. With a Democratic Congress, key committees would fall into the hands of the most left/liberal Democrats, such as David Bonior, John Conyers, and Charlie Rangel. And with the intense pressure put on the President from his labor allies, it would be all but impossible for him to hold firm on a centrist course and resist bending to the will of the Left. Indeed, such was precisely the hope and the game plan of the assembled happy left-wing troopers, who gladly took the back seat for the TV audience and appeared only to enjoy the staged non-issue convention and to cheer the President.

At present, both Left and Center are trying to claim the President as their own, and, wanting to win, Clinton has not disabused either. Yet, one story I heard during the convention gave what perhaps is an indication of where Clinton is heading. After he signed the welfare-reform bill, more than a few op-ed articles were written opposing the bill, and indicating weaknesses that would have to be corrected immediately by the new Congress. Only a few unqualifiedly defended the President. Clinton went out of his way to praise the author of one of the most critical editorials, and although the author of one of the op-eds defending the new bill was nearby, the President said not one word to him. Having done his dirty work, Clinton already was trying to win over those who had been offended, and indicate that in the future, he would be likely to do what they wished.

But there is a danger here. As Democrats like Virginia's Jim Moran, who heads a congressional caucus affiliated with the DLC, put it, the emphasis on work rather than welfare "signals that we recognize that there's a large population of the American people out there who feel that the Democratic Party in the past has been too wedded to the poor, to dysfunctional families and to special-interest groups." Poll after poll shows that if anything, Moran is understating the case. Fewer Americans than ever call themselves Democrats. The Democratic Party, according to the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, had 45 per cent of the voting-age population in 1966. By 1994, at the time of the Republican congressional victory, the number had declined to 33 per cent.

If Clinton moves after the election to pander to the left - liberal wing of the Party, that number will only decline. And as Moran has noted, if the Democrats again come up with the traditional left -liberal agenda, "'98 would be such a tidal wave it would make '94 look like a ripple."

But even if Clinton does not want to move left, the pressure on him will be intense. Having spent some $35 million for the campaign, and having sent numerous staff members to work against the Republicans in key contested districts, the AFL - CIO will clearly expect to call in its chips. While the DLC's statement calls for "a sweeping overhaul of Social Security and Medicare to control their exploding costs," the AFL - CIO and the new left - liberal campaign favor increased spending and new programs, and consider these governmental programs the DLC singles out as sacrosanct edifices of the Democratic Party's contribution to the nation. To these groups, the future of the party is bound to its traditional labor and liberal base.

The New Democrats won the platform war, but it may have been a sign for the future when scores of the left - liberals who made up the majority of delegates to the convention, having already heard the long-awaited Hillary Clinton speech, began to walk out in droves during the keynote speech by the DLC moderate Gov. Evan Bayh of Indiana. Al From, head of the DLC, claims that "the ideological battle is over inside the party" and that, if elected, Clinton will definitely govern as a New Democrat. But the problem -- one that other DLCers like Senator Lieberman acknowledge -- is that while they have the ideas, the other side has the troops. As the Senator told John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, they "could overwhelm us."

Before the convention began, AFL - CIO President John Sweeney, wearing a red labor shirt, presided over a fiery rally in front of the Illinois state building. And at the only formal AFL - CIO caucus, Al Gore made his first Chicago appearance, and pledged his support of organized labor's agenda. Back on October 1995, immediately after Sweeney's election as AFL - CIO chief, Labor Secretary Robert Reich appeared at Sweeney's side at his first public rally, where Reich told the crowd that Bill Clinton would veto any bill labor considers anti-union. The Sweeney leadership of the AFL - CIO thus spells major trouble for Bill Clinton, since its leaders are determined to settle accounts with Clinton for leaving them in the lurch during his first term -- on, among other items, NAFTA and failure to repeal the striker-replacement bill. It was hardly an accident that Mine Worker head Richard Trumka, the AFL - CIO's new secretary treasurer, called the DLC "antiworker" and said its agenda was a "blueprint for Democratic disaster in 1996."

Sitting at a crossroads, the Democrats offered television viewers a phony unity. The presence and new face of the Left make one thing clear -- contra Al From, a victorious Clinton Administration faces a fratricidal war in the ranks of the Democratic Party. Chances are that Clinton's Administration, perhaps against his own best instincts, will be forced to take that tilt to the Left called for by Jackson, Bonior, and Borosage. And should the Democrats manage to retake Congress, the chances that Clinton will hew to a centrist course are even slimmer. At that time, the Left's decision to swallow the bad medicine and remain silent at the convention will look like the shrewdest of politics.