They're All Bushies Now?: In a lot of states, Daschle Democrats are thin on the ground.

The politician appearing most frequently in campaign ads this election season won't be appearing on any ballots. Candidate A features President Bush at a signing ceremony in a TV spot that takes credit for "working with President Bush to pass historic new tax cuts." Another of his ads includes a clip of the president praising him for helping to pass a trade bill. Candidate B is pictured visiting with President Bush in the Oval Office and highlights his support of the president's education reforms. Candidate C explains that he helped Bush reduce welfare rolls. Candidate D brags that the farm bill he backed won "the signature of President Bush," and Candidate E wants voters to know that she "voted for President Bush's defense budget."

Members of a popular president's party could be expected to showcase their leader-but these candidates who are so closely hugging the president on the campaign trail are Democrats: in Montana, Georgia, Texas, Iowa, and Missouri. In this year's competitive races, Bush Democrats are far more plentiful than Daschle Democrats.

"No matter what happens, we're going to have a Bush majority," Mitch Bainwol, the executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, whimsically notes in response to the ubiquitous presence of President Bush in the ads of Democratic Senate candidates. "The only question is whether or not it's a real one."

In a recent appearance in Atlanta to boost the chances of a real Bush majority, the president acknowledged the Democrats' clutch for his coattails. "A couple of citizens from this great state told me my picture seems to be on the TV screen a lot. That a lot of people are using my image during the campaign. Well, I'm here to clarify a few things." He went on to provide some nice tape footage for Sen. Max Cleland's GOP challenger. "The voters shouldn't be confused. For the sake of Georgia, for the sake of the United States, Saxby Chambliss needs to be the next United States senator."

Cleland-the "Candidate B" whose ads feature his photo with Bush-touts his support for the president's education reforms and tax cuts, and blankets the airwaves with testimonials from the state's popular junior senator, conservative Democrat Zell Miller. Rep. Chambliss says he expects that the facts will trump the photos. "When Max Cleland was elected [to replace Sam Nunn], folks thought they were sending another conservative Democrat to Washington. We've shown how liberal his voting record is." Chambliss is referring to a series of 10-second ads in which his campaign highlighted Cleland's liberal votes on issues ranging from abortion and the Boy Scouts to taxes. While Cleland did vote for Bush's tax cut, Republican ads claim that he has supported 116 tax increases; and Chambliss hammers away at the fact that while "Zell Miller sides with the president on homeland security, Cleland sides with the union bosses." There has not been a Senate vote on final passage of Bush's homeland-security plan, but the GOP ads highlight eleven votes Cleland cast against it in committee and on the Senate floor.

In his appearance on behalf of Georgia GOP candidates, Bush criticized the Senate's failure to make his tax cuts permanent, to pass an energy bill, and to approve the homeland-security department. His declaration that the Senate had a "lousy record" on confirming his judicial nominees won the crowd's loudest applause. Bush even took a rare partisan jab by specifying that it is "Senate Democrats" who want to prevent his proposed new federal department from having the needed flexibility to hire, transfer, and fire employees.

Gene Ulm, the Chambliss campaign's pollster, isn't surprised that Cleland is trying to run a "George Bush and me" campaign-given that the president enjoys a 70 percent approval rating in Georgia, with more than 50 percent of Georgians "strongly" approving. Ulm believes that Tom Daschle's sharp criticisms of the president's Iraq policy were a mistake because he appeared to be politicizing the national-security debate; Ulm's tracking polls indicate that the sympathetic visit to Baghdad by Congressmen Bonior and McDermott hurt the party among traditional southern Democrats.

Missouri senator Jean Carnahan trumpets her support for President Bush's defense budget, tax cuts, and Iraq resolution-and apparently has felt jilted, because Bush is enthusiastically supporting her challenger, former congressman Jim Talent. Carnahan recently had to apologize for saying that the White House couldn't get Osama bin Laden so they were out to get her instead; defending herself, she pleaded frustration that despite her votes in favor of some of the president's priorities, the White House was inexplicably focused on defeating her.

In Louisiana, Sen. Mary Landrieu's ads declare that she "voted with President Bush 74 percent of the time." She takes credit for supporting the Bush tax cut and for "leading the fight against human cloning." Montana senator Max Baucus is running ads with footage showing Bush signing "historic new tax cuts," and a commercial for Ron Kirk, the Democratic Senate nominee in Texas, declares that he supports the president on taxes, education, the war on terrorism, and faith-based initiatives.

Democratic candidates' professed admiration for the Bush agenda has much to do with the geography of this year's elections: Many Democrats are running in the "red states" that Bush carried in 2000. While Republicans have adopted a prescription-drug-benefit plan to defend against a Democratic proposal, the Bush Democrats are giving up much more ideological territory: They endorse the president's agenda on multiple issues including tax cuts, education, and national security, where there are no clear Democratic alternatives. This campaign strategy represents a complete repudiation of the Democratic party's most loyal supporters-who angrily nurse their grievances over the Florida recount and entertain each other by recounting verbal gaffes by a president they persist in seeing as not up to the job. But the incumbents seeking re-election as Bush Democrats aren't just running away from the president's most strident critics to avoid any taint of being Streisand Democrats; they are also repudiating Tom Daschle's decision to run the Senate as though he presided over a wholly "blue state" caucus and thus courted no political trouble by blocking Bush's agenda.

Can they get away with it? There is a clear disconnect between how Bush Democrats are portraying themselves in their campaigns and the argument being made on their behalf by their party leaders in Washington. Congresswoman Nita Lowey of New York, who heads the House Democrats' campaign committee, maintains that Democrats must reclaim the House in order to provide "a firm Democratic check on President Bush and the Republicans." Lowey's message might play well back home in New York, but it's not what voters want to hear in Georgia. In a recent editorial endorsing Saxby Chambliss, the Marietta Daily Journal pointed out that "a vote for Cleland . . . is tantamount to a vote for leaving the Senate in control of the Democrats."

The Senate might well remain in control of the Democrats-but whichever party prevails in November, George W. Bush's coattails will deserve part of the credit. The political calculation Bush Democrats are making is obvious, but Republican adman Alex Castellanos also points to a kind of Clinton fatigue: "I can understand why Democrats are doing it. It's been a long time since they've had a president they could love."