He might seem a spent political force, a liberal foundering in a conservative riptide, but the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson is biding his time, waiting for the Gingrich revolution to ignite a new social protest movement.
Led into power officially last week by House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Republicans will be unmasked as protectors of a wealthy, conscienceless elite, Mr. Jackson predicted, adding that there will be a backlash when voters see that, once again, they were misled.
"I am fired up, determined and full of hope," Mr. Jackson told a group of friends and financial supporters during a recent visit to Baltimore.
At a time when many Democrats are running toward the right, Mr. Jackson remains an unrepentant liberal -- a firm believer in the politics of the New Deal and the Great Society.
He said the Gingrich-led call for sharp cuts in poverty programs, for lifting some environmental regulations and for middle- and upper-income tax relief would reunite a coalition of unionists, minorities, environmentalists, the poor and women.
Using the Christmas story as an anecdotal backdrop, he voiced concern about the poor, and how they'd be hurt by cuts in social spending made to free money for a middle-class tax cut.
"Neither Mary nor Joseph nor Jesus were middle class," Mr. Jackson said. "In this atmosphere, Mary, as a teen-age mother, would have been humiliated. She was unmarried to Joseph, just engaged to him, an unemployed carpenter, and Jesus would have been sent to an orphanage."
Members of the liberal coalition had become complacent and less focused on their objectives when the Democrats controlled Congress, Mr. Jackson said. Now, with Republicans chairing key committees and the GOP pushing to dismantle the congressional caucuses, a new social protest movement is bound to form, Mr. Jackson predicted.
His optimism, to be sure, came wrapped in warnings.
Speaker Gingrich would lead the nation back toward the day of segregationists like Lester Maddox, the restaurant owner who passed out ax handles to his patrons and was subsequently elected governor of Georgia, Mr. Gingrich's home state.
"Gingrich wants to wipe out the legacy of the Great Society," he said. "He won't succeed. . . . Maddox could not stop the clock, and we didn't have the right to vote then. Gingrich does not have the power to turn back the clock. He may announce that as his intent, but while he is working on that agenda we will not be crocheting."
Gingrich vulnerable
Just as Republicans have made President Clinton a negative rallying point for their faithful, Mr. Jackson believes Mr. Gingrich could become a symbol of the big-money Washington elite.
Mr. Gingrich's Georgia congressional district is "economically gerrymandered," drawn to protect the interests of big businesses located there: Home Box Office, Lockheed, AT&T;, Kimberly-Clark and others, Mr. Jackson said. The constituency is about 90 percent white with a median income substantially higher than the rest of Georgia. "He attacks the poor because he doesn't represent them," Mr. Jackson concludes.
Despite what looks like an ideal district, he observed, Mr. Gingrich barely won re-election in his last two outings.
"If he wants term limitations, that's what we plan to give him. We needs to know he's beatable. He is no lifetime congressman." Mr. Jackson said he gave two speeches in Mr. Gingrich's district recently and discovered pockets of voters who might be won over by the right opponent.
He said he listened carefully as Mr. Clinton spoke about his proposal, the "middle-class bill of rights," hoping to find some concern for the poor and heard none: "Any plan that does not defend the poor and deliver the needy does not have a moral core."
Mr. Jackson also made the following observations:
* On the last election: Mr. Clinton was repudiated because he promised help and hope but produced neither.
"He's gone from running on reinvestment to governing on deficit reduction to retooling on tax cuts.
Unions who were promised reinvestment and community development banks got nothing. And blacks who were promised more justice got a record number of jails. So, you had a demoralized base -- low walls, not high water.
"We registered 2 million new voters in 1984. Ronald Reagan was elected president, but the Democrats won the Senate. The conservative water was just as high then, but our walls were higher."
Rebuilding the walls, he said, will require not only hard work but complicated choices. Should the oppressed, the minorities, the unions and others stick solely with the Democrats? Is there any hope for the "new" thinking espoused by the Democratic Leadership Council? He was dubious about all existing party structures:
"Republicans won't register blacks because they might vote Democratic and Democrats won't register them because they might demand justice and inclusion."
Vouchers unfair
* On the Christian Coalition: After the public schools were desegregated, he said, "the promise to build great public schools was not kept and the Christian Coalition formed private Christian academies.
"Now they can't afford them, so they want vouchers."
* Civil rights today: Some may think bigotry and discrimination are in the past, but they are mistaken, he said.
"Opponents of equal rights don't support affirmative action as a remedy and that's the law, now. That's why we need a moral offensive, now."
* The once and future liberal leadership: Politics has turned into a matter of "my district, my ward, my city, my turf."
"We've developed a sense of seeing a problem as local when it is in fact national. When dogs bit us in Birmingham, we bled everywhere. When Rosa Parks acted in Birmingham, we cared everywhere.
"Now that they ain't got committees," he said, winking at Rep. Kweisi Mfume, who was present at the event, "maybe they have time to march again. . . . Since conscience is nonnegotiable, then maybe this is your finest hour."
Mr. Mfume said he believes Mr. Jackson could well develop his own party, a left-wing alternative to the third-party potential of the Texas businessman Ross Perot.
* Redistricting: The Black and Hispanic caucuses are worrying that Louisiana Rep. Cleo Fields has a problem because his Z-shaped district boundaries, drawn to assure a court-ordered minimum of black voters, are being challenged in the courts.
"Cleo Fields does have a problem, but that problem is no less of an issue for Baltimore than was Rosa Parks' plight in Birmingham," he said.
"Those who have had to make room for racial justice are now saying that racial justice is illegal. If that suit is lost, yes, Cleo will lose to David Duke [the former Ku Klux Klan member who has run for several offices unsuccessfully in Louisiana]. David Duke will be the congressman from northern Louisiana. But if the case is lost, it will affect half the other Black Caucus members, state legislators, city council and school board members, not to speak of affirmative action and economic set asides across the country.
Poverty cycle
"There ain't no hiding place," he said.
* Attitudes: He chided those who say they can't make it because they are poor, tenants of public housing. They have "a lot more heat and comfort than Jesus and his family had." He warned against the so-called "poor people's complex." He suggested a divine role model.
"Jesus decided to be like his daddy, developed a messianic complex, a leadership complex, not a poor person's complex."
* The struggle: "We are not fighting for welfare. We might win and get it. Welfare is the caboose of the economic train. We are fighting to get into the engine where capital is, where wealth is, where manufacturing is.
"We're not there because they red-lined us out. We want to be where the jobs are. We might end up on welfare, but we're fighting for work. If all of that fails we might be on welfare for a
season, but not for a lifetime."
C. Fraser Smith is a reporter for The Baltimore Sun.