The future of the Democratic Party: top pros review prospects for a '96 comeback.

The conventional wisdom is that the Democratic party is like the Bismarck - as the world's biggest political battleship, the party is listing in the water and waiting for another salvo of torpedoes to send it to oblivion.

But the notion that the Dems are sitting ducks is wrong according to a panel of partisan experts who spoke at "The Future of the Democratic Party and the 1996 Election," sponsored by Campaigns & Elections, the American Association of Political Consultants, and The Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University. The discussion, held in Washington, DC, was part of the "Outlook '96: Presidential Election Conference Series," which will include 22 more conferences into early 1997.

Here's what top party leaders and analysts had to say about the prospects for President Clinton and his party.

DON FOWLER, CHAIR, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE:

We were taught for years that if the economy was good, the party in power would do well and the party out of power would do badly. That was proven incorrect in 1994, more than any other piece of American political folklore that I can identify in the past 50 years. People voted issues that were very different from economic concerns.

In November, every economic indicator was good - inflation stable, economy growing, budget deficits reduced, unemployment down - but the Republicans won anyway. You have to look at other factors that caused the results of the midterm elections.

The other issue in 1994 that established an emerging pattern is volatility - more volatility than we've ever seen in the American public, at least over a sustained period. Voters are terribly apprehensive about the education that their children are getting. There's been a fundamental restructuring of the job market. The GOP offered an explanation that was simple, but divisive. We Democrats have to understand that simply doing a good job on the economy is no longer sufficient.

To contend with this volatility, we must adjust our political apparatus and organization. We have certain identifiable groups in our base, we think we can rely on them, but that base is not as large as it used to be. We have to look at the 25-30 percent of the electorate that essentially doesn't identify with any party.

There are social issues, such as abortion and affirmative action, that come and go for which there is no long-term intellectual mooring. That creates a lot of the volatility. We have to learn to deal with those issues. The three orientations - issues, party, and candidate - are still important. But the candidate is more important than ever. The pervasiveness of TV makes people feel that they must feel comfortable with their candidate. You have to be both Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy, and that's a tough assignment...

There is the perception among voters, erroneous though it is, that affirmative action has created a system of quotas; that it has introduced into the employment, contracting and educational system a high level of unfairness by providing opportunities for women and minorities. The opposite is correct. Affirmative action has created a great deal of fairness where prejudice and discrimination previously existed. But the facts in this case aren't necessarily the most relevant political features, because there is, particularly in the minds of white males, the notion that affirmative action has created all of this trouble.

The GOP in 1996 will try to drive a racial wedge between core elements of the. Democratic party's base - women, African-Americans, Hispanics - and a lot of independents and non-partisan identifiers we need to win...They've played the racial card before, and snuck up on us. We won't let them do that again.

DOTTY LYNCH, POLLING EDITOR, CBS NEWS:

Let's examine some of the conventional wisdom that most of us, at least in the media, are now operating on. One bit of wisdom is that President Clinton can only get about 40 percent of the vote in 1996, which means the only way that he can win is to have a third party candidate in the race. But if you look at the trial heats out there now, you see a four point spread in a two-way matchup between Bob Dole and Bill Clinton.

Regardless, I think that the scenario for Clinton looks best if the Republicans are divided either with a conservative candidate like a Pat Buchanan running as an independent on abortion or a Perot-like candidate who gets exactly the constituency he got last time in 1992 and Clinton getting exactly the constituency he got.

The middle and working classes who had high hopes for Clinton and the Democratic party felt disappointed, especially on health care. The Democrats need to deal with these voters in '96.

One way the party won't win is if it reverses affirmative action - that would be suicide for the Democrats. It would alienate their base voters and provide an issue to ignite liberals in the party against the president. It would motivate someone like [House Minority Leader] Dick Gephardt to mn and reinforce the notion that Clinton doesn't stand for anything.

Affirmative action makes the GOP squirm when it comes to women. As a magic silver bullet to get angry white voters back, the notion of abandoning affirmative action should be reassessed. There's room for the Democrats to come back in 1996, but they'll need issues to unify them. The party must pay attention to struggling working people, especially women. It needs a message that doesn't "dis" the base.

DON SWEITZER, MANAGING PARTNER OF POLITICS INC., A CAMPAIGN CONSULTING FIRM BASED IN WASHINGTON:

The Democratic party has to realize that 1994 was a devastating defeat - bigger than anything any of us have ever seen. The party is aware of what occurred and is making fine-tuning adjustments without changing what we stand for.

The Republicans succeeded in nationalizing the campaign. The voters put them in a lot of seats, but that doesn't mean that voters bought into everything in the Contract with America. Surveys showed that most people didn't even know what the Contract was. They voted for certain individuals - and got Newt Gingrich. Polls showed people want government to attack the deficit, not cut taxes.

As we prepare for the next cycle, we're not going to buy into this idea that the Democratic Party is over. In '94, turnout was low. People who turned out for the Republicans were motivated and scared by their messages. The radical right was motivated to vote against Clinton and everything he stood for. We had difficulty motivating our people.

It will be a test in '96 to motivate our base. We can't be "Republican Lite." We must stand for certain things; we must stand with our base - women, African-Americans, unions, environmentalists - and expand from there. We need 'angry white males' but not all of them.

We're a long way from the demise of the party. You can't forget: this president is a masterful campaigner. If you look at the Republican presidential candidates, every one of them has problems - within their party and with the electorate.

MATT REESE, DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL CONSULTANT AND FACULTY MEMBER OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF POLITICAL MANAGEMENT:

When I started in politics in the 1960s, the party managed elections - for Congress, governor, president. There was a party tradition and commitment; times were less cynical. There was a commitment to the New Deal. Now, we've got political action committees and their millions of dollars; the tradition has faded.

Al Capone once said, "You can get more done with a kind word and a gun that with a kind word alone." Don Fowler, sitting to my left, has a $40 million gun, in the form of soft money at the DNC. I will presume to tell Don how to spend it.

There's an old story that's analagous to consulting. The doctor asks, "When does it hurt?" The patient answers, "When I do this." And the doctor answers: "Well, don't do that," and hands him his bill. I made a good living that way, saying to candidates, "Don't do that." My advice to the Democrats: Go into the field. About half of all campaigns that do nothing but television go on to lose. To win elections, get out the vote and motivate volunteers. We can find scores and scores of volunteers to go door-to-door. We should target volunteers better; start investigating nation-wide geodemographic targeting.

There are two prospects to work in a campaign - the voter who is undecided, and the non-voter who is for you. I wish the Lord would make the voter who is undecided have a green nose and voters who are with us have a purple ear. When I come to the door and the voter has a green nose, I'd know I'll have to persuade him. If he has a purple ear, then I know I'll leave him alone until election day when I'll then have to turn him out. I don't know what the party does in this regard, forgive me, but I have a suspicion that the party is not expert in targeting, and who else is going to do that, to spend the money, to find that out?

You need to do a coordinated campaign, a sharing of the targeted voters, establishing a pattern of contact: four pieces of mail, three phone calls, two visits, on certain days. Give centralized service - help them with their mail. Train for your plan - that simple plan of a coordinated campaign. You need to keep to your plan. Number one, keep to your focus; number two, resist the pressures to stray; and number three, don't yield to the frustrations.

MARK MELLMAN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF THE MELLMAN GROUP, A DEMOCRATIC POLLING AND CONSULTING FIRM IN WASHINGTON:

The Democratic Party is at parity with the Republican party, a situation that has existed for some period of time. We lost a lot of seats, so how can I say we're at parity? For a long time, we've had structural benefits that masked that parity, benefits having to do with the way districts are drawn or long-time incumbency. Those institutional advantages were stripped away. But compared to our average base vote since 1970, we're only about 4 percentage points below average. Not a lot of people shifted their voting behavior in 1994.

History shows that, over time, you get a spring back the other way. We have a great chance to get the House back in 1996. The Republicans are making a big mistake - they're vastly over-interpreting their mandate. The voters don't want to cut Medicare, Medicaid, student loans, school lunches, etc. We're about to enter a big debate on the budget. The Republican's commitment is to balance the budget by 2002 and maintain defense spending, a formula that will require draconian budget cuts and ultimately change the dynamic of the debate.

Republicans are saying it doesn't matter what they do, as long as it's radical and big and sweeping - the same mistake that the Democrats made in 1992, when they said it doesn't matter what is done, as long as it's big, as with health care reform.

National elections tend to be a referendum on the party in power. In 1994, there was no one else to blame but the Democrats. The choice wasn't as ambiguous as it has been in the past, with the Democrats in control of Congress and a Republican in the White House. The two GOP frontrunners, Dole and Gramm, are "mean" and "meaner." Both of these individuals pose problems for their party. You have Bob Dole, who combines Ronald Reagan's age with Jerry Ford's message, and you have Phil Gramm, who combines Newt Gingrich's personality with David Duke's message. This will make it easier for President Clinton to turn this election around from a referendum to a choice. The climate in '96 will shift in our direction.

STANLEY GREENBERG, DEMOCRATIC POLLSTER AND AN ADVISOR TO THE DNC AND PRESIDENT CLINTON:

The vote in 1992 was against Republican governance; the '94 vote was against Democratic governance. But the context is volatility and the decline of party identification. That reflects the reality.

Many have misread the '94 election and the first "100 Days" in the House. The conventional wisdom says there's been a massive upheaval, a GOP realignment. It's dangerous for both parties to operate on that assumption. What we're really seeing is both parties sliding. Both are in disreputable parity; both are split in terms of voter ID; both lack a hold on the public.

I'm impressed by the level of frenetic energy in the House, but what's really striking is a shift we're seeing in regard to the president. During the last 100 days, more and more people have faith in the president to handle major issues. Since the nationalization of the election in 1994, we've seen an impressive assault on government. The GOP has delivered the message over and over again that government is incompetent, but that's a tactical gain. It doesn't instill confidence in the party in power.

The GOP has been playing on xenophobic fears in a populist way. It has worked in the short term, but it's not a way to build a base for a presidential candidate in 1996. Income stagnation and the breakdown of families are the issues that people really deal with every day, and they're the issues that the Democrats were perceived to have ignored. That's the test the Contract will be put against and it's our challenge for 1996.

TERRY TURNER, LEGISLATIVE AND POLITICAL DIRECTOR, SEAFARERS INTERNATIONAL UNION OF NORTH AMERICA:

Has labor lost its clout?

You have to ask, "Compared to what" Matt Reese used to get up in the morning and read what Walter Reuther said. What Reuther said, he believed. And whatever he said was the right thing, and rank-and-file labor supported him no matter what he asked us to do. Can you imagine [AFL-CIO president] Lane Kirkland saying, "Let's really show our clout in the streets by striking and closing this country down," and then people following him? No. That wouldn't happen.

Back in Reuther's day, communication was monolithic. But the troops in the streets have changed. Compared to the 1940s and 1950s, they receive much more information from many more diverse sources. There won't be a Moses to lead Democrats and labor out of the wilderness.

In the next election cyle, we must recognize our strengths. Union membership is diverse, but they have certain things in common - they work for a living, they send their kids to school. The unions have money to give; that can tum into votes.

Unions can communicate with their membership - we can write them, phone them. Unions shouldn't over-promise to the Democratic leadership. We can't simply deliver votes; we can't just push a button and get people to vote a certain way. But we can promise the Democratic party that we'll communicate with our membership and get the word out.

JOHN FRANZEN, PRESIDENT, JOHN FRANZEN MULTIMEDIA, DEMOCRATIC MEDIA CONSULTANTS BASED IN WASHINGTON:

Our party's prospects are quite good if we stick to fundamentals, and nothing is more fundamental in politics than economics. Yes, it's true - if you look at the stock market, gross national product, or even at new jobs created, the economy has been healthy. But if you look at take-home wages, the economy was doing badly.

Since 1973, the real annual income of high school dropouts has declined 23 percent; for high school graduates with no college, it's down 17 percent; for those with some college, it's down 7.3 percent. You have to go all the way to college graduates for an increase - only 5 percent. If you want to understand the volatility among the electorate, look at those numbers. Those are our people, or at least they ought to be, and they're in considerable distress. They're vulnerable to the GOP's message, of looking for scapegoats and people to blame. But there's an advantage for the Democrats in being out of power in Congress - voters look to the people in power to blame for not solving these problems.

Neither party has a satisfactory answer for these economic issues because these problems are structural - they're caused by foreign competition, the globalization of the workforce, etc. But the Democrats have a better answer in terms of lifting people out of this situation and improving their day-to-day lives and the amount of money they take home every week.

For the rest of this century and beyond, we'll continue to see wide swings between the parties and long-term economic problems, causing sour and nasty politics. An advantage that Democrats have is that at least we're facing these issues, whereas the GOP is taking actions, such as tax cuts for the wealthy, that will only widen the gap between the rich and poor.

The president has focused on education, on raising the minimum wage. The Democrats must continue to focus on these issues, and not get distracted by boogeymen that the Republicans throw up. Our party must build itself institutionally; it must rebuild its party structure. We can't do it with 30 second TV spots alone.