Dems Plotting to Regain Power

Come next year, Republicans will be in control of all three power centers of the federal government – White House, Senate and House of Representatives.

It will be the first time in 45 years that Democrats have found themselves in that uncomfortable fix.

Not only are they unaccustomed to being on the outside looking in; they detest it.

They're wasting no time gearing up to rescue themselves, beginning with the next congressional and governorship elections two years hence.

What's more, they're giving themselves rather good odds for 2002 – and in the 2004 presidential election as well.

According to a report in the Thursday issue of the Christian Science Monitor:

• The Democratic Party is better financed and organized than ever before in its long history – coming out of a presidential campaign for the first time in the black, by some $8 million.

• As the 2000 elections demonstrated, it can appeal to a majority of voting Americans, even if just barely.

• While the Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Al Gore, lost in the Electoral College – many Democrats shrug that off as an archaic technicality – he did win the popular vote by more than 500,000 votes, a wider margin than Clinton ever produced.

• In the House, Democrats picked up two seats, reducing their margin to a slim nine.

• They closed the gap in the Senate to 50-50, with only a tie-breaking vote by the next vice president, Dick Cheney, giving Republicans their finger-nail grip on control of the upper chamber.

Add all those up and Democrats in Washington feel they have good reason to be optimistic about their future.

But all is not clear sailing for them.

There still remain the old tensions within the party between liberals and moderates, or populists and centrists.

There is already dissention in their ranks over whether the smart course for the party will be to oppose the incoming Republican president, George W. Bush, on every aspect of his legislative initiatives and appointments or to cut deals with him to advance as much of their own agenda as possible in a closely divided Congress.

A struggle is developing also for control, and direction, of the Democratic National Committee.

Outgoing President Clinton's choice to head the DNC is his and first lady Hillary Clinton's major fund-raiser, Terry McAuliffe.

But McAuliffe, who is white, is encountering strong opposition from powerful blacks within the party who say they delivered 11 states to Gore. They resent the way McAuliffe popped to the top without their prior consultation and approval.

Result: They are pushing their own candidate for DNC chairman: former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, a black.

He is a favorite of Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., an active member of the Congressional Black Caucus who has become highly critical of the current white-dominated party leadership.

Jackson disputes McAuliffe's view that the party does not need major rebuilding.

Next time around, Jackson argues, the DNC should not concentrate on only 17 states, ignoring the other 33, and should run things from the grass roots up, not from the top down.