President Clinton has "the mind of a new Democrat [and] the heart of an old Democrat," the chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council said last week. The DLC is the quintessential "new Democratic" organization. It urges Democrats to adopt new and moderate policies and ideas.
Rep. Dave McCurdy, who lost a Senate bid in Oklahoma and has blamed his loss in part on the "burden" of Mr. Clinton's old Democratic agenda, spoke to the DLC's annual meeting. The president, in turned, called on DLCers to join him "in the arena, not in the peanut gallery." The peanut gallery is the cheap seats; some moderates no doubt think that remark was a cheap shot. After all, Vice President Gore told the DLC "we have not been 100 percent faithful [to DLC ideas] and you can and do make a powerful argument that where we have not been, we should have been."
The president definitely needs to be more responsive to this wing of his party than he has been. All the tea leaves show Americans are still at least as resolutely centrist and conservative as they were in 1992, when 57 percent voted for the two most conservative presidential candidates in a three-man race. The congressional elections were unmistakable in their philosophical implications. Part of the Republican success was due to personal antipathy toward President Clinton, but most of it was to due to voter rejection of an over-reaching and overly-centralized national government.
DLC types are scrambling to get on that side of the wave. For example, Colorado Gov. Roy Romer told the meeting that the administration's big "conservative" victory, the get-tough crime
bill, was the wrong approach. He said instead of sending money to Washington and have it returned to the states in police grants, federal taxes ought to be cut and let local government use that money to pay for policing. That sort of federalism is being discussed from the peanut gallery to front row center, and the president better listen.
His job approval rating has stagnated at 47 percent (to 41 disapproval) -- a bad-news level. Voters told Times-Mirror pollsters they want (43-38 percent) Republicans in Congress, not the president, to "lead in solving the nation's problems." Even worse, 66 percent of Democrats and 81 percent of independents want to see him challenged for re-nomination. Some DLC types are already being urged to consider: Mr. McCurdy, Governor Romer, former Oklahoma Sen. David Boren, Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia. None is ready for a challenge yet, but if the president's poll numbers are as miserable a year from now, some Democrats may come down from the peanut gallery to the political arena, not to join Mr. Clinton but to oppose him.