WASHINGTON -- The Democratic Leadership Council's new 10-point program is, as DLC President Al From put it, a "progressive alternative" to the 10-point "Contract With America" embraced by the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives. It includes some innovative and thoughtful approaches to governmental reform.
The critical difference is that most of the Republican plan is likely to be passed by the House, while the DLC program can serve as no more than a topic for debate within the Democratic Party. It has the support of neither the White House nor the party leadership in Congress.
And the ratio of moderately conservative Democrats, those most likely to identify with the DLC, to liberals has declined in both houses as a result of the debacle the party suffered in the 1994 elections.
What is missing in both the Republican and DLC approaches is the kind of direct attack on entitlement programs that everyone in both parties, first, recognizes is needed for any realistic attack on the federal deficit and, second, understands is politically impossible.
The DLC obviously made a conscious effort to avoid being accused of me-too-ism in trying to compete with that Republican contract. The two programs overlap directly on only two or three particulars. The Democrats' plan omits such obvious political crowd-pleasers as a balanced budget amendment and the line-item veto, and differs in its approach to such problems as welfare reform.
But the DLC program inevitably will be seen -- correctly -- as an appeal beamed largely to the middle-class voters who deserted the Democrats in such huge numbers in the 1994 elections and have become the prime target for the Republicans.
And the fact that the Democrats' plan is so different from anything the White House has been willing to embrace will mean that it also is seen as an expression of dissatisfaction with President Clinton and such liberal leaders in Congress as the new House minority leader, Richard Gephardt.
There is, of course, some obvious irony in this. As governor of Arkansas, Clinton was an active leader of the council, serving as its chairman until he stepped aside to begin his campaign for president in 1991. During that campaign, moreover, the DLC credential was one of those that candidate Clinton used to define himself as a "New Democrat" or "different kind of Democrat" rather than a linear descendant of such liberal standard-bearers as Walter Mondale in 1984 and Michael Dukakis in 1988.
Now the only inference that can be drawn from the new DLC program is that the group has decided -- as did many voters -- that Clinton had shown himself to be too much the conventional liberal once he took office.
There is some foundation for complaints about Clinton's liberalism. The attempt to change the rules on homosexuals in the armed forces would fit into that category, as would his support for gun control and a largely government-directed solution to the health care problem. The early approval of the family leave bill fulfilled a longstanding goal of liberals.
But the notion that voters were reacting on the basis of ideological labels in the 1994 elections misses the point the voters were making in their attack on the controlling Democrats. What they were saying was that the political establishment, largely Democratic, had become at once too isolated from their concerns and too intrusive in their solutions.
In terms of Clinton specifically, the polls suggest, the voters were saying that he has not convinced them he is a strong leader controlling the government and using it in ways to deal with their problems. And that is not a perception that is going to be corrected by putting forward a 10-point program and pressuring the president to accept it.
The DLC was created 10 years ago as a response to the Mondale defeat to offer a national organization with which more conservative Democrats could identify themselves without risking scorn from their constituents.
But the DLC is in no position to imagine it can write an agenda for the debate ahead on national directions. Unlike the Republicans, they don't have the votes.