Democrats urged to broaden appeal

WASHINGTON -- Two leading architects of the platform Bill Clinton used to snatch the White House from Republicans in 1992 yesterday released a study arguing that the Democratic Party must focus on appealing to swing voters, not mobilizing its traditional liberal allies, because the ranks of party supporters aren't big enough to win elections.

The study, an analysis of long-term voting trends, found that the Democratic Party has lost critical ground with married women, Roman Catholics, and voters without college educations.

''Democrats cannot win by mobilizing their base," said Elaine C. Kamarck, a former Clinton adviser who now teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

In 1989, a year after the landslide defeat of presidential candidate and Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, Kamarck and her co-author, William A. Galston, now director of the University of Maryland's Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, scolded the Democratic Party for avoiding ''meaningful change." Their study, ''The Politics of Evasion," helped inspire Clinton's centrist approach.

Sixteen years later, following the narrow defeat of another Massachusetts presidential candidate, Senator John F. Kerry in 2004, the scholars say the Democratic Party is stronger at the national level but has lost key segments of the electorate.

Last year, Kamarck noted, Democrats had hoped to regain the support of married women that the party lost in the 2000 presidential election, largely because of President Clinton's impeachment after lying about an affair with a White House intern,

''Not only did they not come back, but they voted against us in even greater numbers," Kamarck said. The report noted that the Democratic Party's lack of support among married people, men and women, was particularly damaging in swing states such as Ohio last year.

And despite Kerry's own religion, the Democratic Party's share of the Catholic vote dropped. ''Bush's gains among Catholics in 2004 exceeded his margin of victory in key states such as Ohio and Florida," the report found.

With Republicans sliding in public opinion polls since last year's elections, Democrats are counting on making gains in Congress in 2006. But so far, polls indicate that the Democratic Party has not been able to capitalize on GOP troubles. An earlier study by Democratic strategists Stanley C. Greenberg and James Carville concluded that the party's ''own image has not improved and most of the gain in the congressional vote margin [in polls] has come from Republicans' decline."

Party strategists -- ranging from centrists like Kamarck and Galston to liberals such as Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean -- say the party needs an improved national vision. But a unified strategy has yet to emerge.

Kamarck and Galston concluded that, in crafting that vision, Democrats shouldn't concentrate on their liberal-left base, which is much smaller than the GOP's conservative base.

In 2004, only 21 percent of voters called themselves liberal, while 34 percent said they were conservative. The rest, 45 percent, characterized themselves as moderate.

Kamarck and Galston's latest study was released as well-funded leftist groups play an increasingly critical role in elections, partly because campaign finance reform has limited the resources of the major parties. And while Galston and Kamarck argue for a strong national defense policy, any centrist Democrat must still be able to appease a vigorous and growing antiwar sentiment inside the party.

Galston insisted that the two positions can be meshed. ''You can believe it was a mistake to go in [to Iraq] and still believe there is a right way and a wrong way to fulfill that commitment," Galston said.

The authors were critical of Kerry's campaign, asserting his positions on the war in Iraq undermined the Democrats' need to present voters with a candidate of strong character and consistency.

''There is no narrative that explains how you vote for the Iraq war and against $87 billion in funding," Kamarck said of the two Kerry votes on the Iraq conflict that fueled criticism of him as a ''flip-flopper."

Kerry spokesman David Wade rejected that criticism. ''Real strength is telling the truth when troops are being killed, and one year later a lot of Americans realize John Kerry had it both right and consistent about Iraq and this president's still got it dead wrong," Wade said.

On Election Day, Kerry did pull substantial numbers of voters from the center. Among Kerry's voters, 51 percent called themselves moderate, 38 percent liberal, and 10 percent conservative, according to exit polls cited in the report. Bush's voters were 56 percent conservative, 38 percent moderate, and 4 percent liberal.

Kamarck and Galston also argued that the Democrats need to be more tolerant toward those with conservative social values, or risk further losses within the middle class.

''Republicans win when the electorate is polarized," said US Senator Tom Carper, Democrat of Delaware and co-chairman of Third Way, the group that sponsored the study. ''For Democrats to win, we have to rise above base politics."