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Thursday, Jan. 25, 2001

''Mondale with a surplus'' is what Will Marshall, Progressive Policy Institute chairman, called the former vice president's campaign. Democratic Leadership Council President Al From, a longtime ally, said Gore came across as a ''liberal advocate of big government.''

But a defender of Gore says that the Democrats' future rests with their traditional special-interest groups and that Gore lost in part from voter resentment of Bill Clinton's scandals.

Economist Ruy Teixeira said centrist Democrats blaming Gore seemed to want a ''political exorcism'' of the party's most loyal backers.

Democrats confronted their differences Wednesday in a DLC-sponsored conference titled "Why Gore Lost, and What's Next for Democrats." Teixeira, Marshall, From and AFL-CIO political director Steve Rosenthal attended.

"Let's face it, he wasn't the most adept politician,'' Teixeira, a fellow with the liberal Century Foundation, said at the forum Wednesday. "And he had difficulty doing both things at once: maintaining some distance [from the Clinton administration] and getting some credit'' for the administration's achievements.

"The key question we should ask the prospective Democratic candidates for president in 2004 is, can you hang? Let's see how you hang [relate to ordinary people] on a corner in South Philadelphia,'' said Rosenthal.

"Bush can hang, you know. Clinton can hang. Al Gore, I've seen him, he can hang, but he didn't show it in this election,'' Rosenthal said.

A fight already has developed for the party's leadership. Some black leaders are balking at Clinton's choice of his longtime fund-raiser, Terry McAuliffe, as the next Democratic National Committee chairman. His challenger, former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, got a boost Monday with an endorsement from Gore's primary challenger, Bill Bradley.

Gore is a longtime Democratic Leadership Council member, but his centrist friends did not pull punches in a new issue of Blueprint, DLC's magazine. Marshall wrote that Gore abandoned Clinton-Gore ''reform-minded centrism'' aimed at ''new economy'' workers for a ''business-bashing 'populism.' ''

Gore, he wrote, ''often looked and sounded like a throwback to the doomed Democratic campaigns of the 1980s, replete with vintage class warfare themes and narrowly tailored appeals to constituency groups.''

Many programs advocated by Gore had merit, Marshall wrote. But he said Gore's ''inability to articulate any sense of public purpose larger than the expansion of government for the benefit of favored groups also reinforced George W. Bush's charge that Gore was a big-spending liberal – 'Mondale with a surplus,' in the tart description of one observer.''

Former Vice President Walter Mondale, a liberal Democrat, lost in a landslide to President Ronald Reagan in the 1984 election.

Rep. Adam Smith, a moderate Democrat from Washington, said the Democrats came across as ''far too reliant on the role of government,'' were ''too partisan'' and ''excessively loyal to interest groups.'' Smith, moderator of the conference, said Democrats were ignoring ''the changing economic and social realities in our country.''

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