Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Middle class carried Clinton Date: Fri, 6 Nov 92 11:28:29 EST Message-ID: \SE A;NATION;ELECTIONS '92;NEWS ANALYSIS \HD Middle class carried Clinton \SH Campaign kept focus on economy \BY Donald Lambro \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES After his party lost every presidential election but one in the past 24 years, Bill Clinton returned the Democrats to power by refocusing his party on the economics of the middle class. More than any other issue in the 1992 election, more than all of the campaign tactics he employed, this was the dominant factor in Mr. Clinton's large electoral victory over President Bush, Democratic strategists said yesterday. "Message discipline," "message focus" and "middle-class economics" were among the political terms Democratic campaign consultants used to explain how Mr. Clinton reversed a trend in which his party lost five of six presidential elections. "He ran a very disciplined campaign that stayed focused on jobs and the economy," said Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin of Peter Hart Research. "Too many Democratic presidential nominees let their campaigns get sidetracked in the past. Clinton didn't let that happen. . . . "Clinton appealed to the mainstream electorate better than anyone has done in a long time. He brought the middle class back to the Democratic Party." The result was that the Arkansas governor won a plurality of the middle-class voters, the pivotal constituency that Ronald Reagan won in 1980 and 1984 and George Bush won in 1988. "He did better than [Michael] Dukakis did with moderate voters and not as well as Dukakis did with liberals, but that was a trade-off he was glad to make," Mr. Garin said. "In 1988, Dukakis won people earning under $30,000 while he lost people making over $30,000," he said. "But that's not where the middle class is anymore." Mr. Clinton won a plurality of white voters with incomes between $30,000 and $75,000, according to television exit polls, "and that was the critical difference," Mr. Garin said. "More than anything else, it was their message discipline that won it for them," Democratic consultant Alan Secrest said. "And that message focused on the economy and change. It sounds simple, and it really is simple. But I've been in dozens of campaigns, and you'd be surprised how difficult it is to keep a candidate on his major theme. "Every campaign has a big idea or message, and Clinton and his team, particularly James Carville and Paul Begala, must be given credit for single-mindedly sticking to the economy and to change and aiming that message at the middle class they needed to win." "Clinton very early on also took away the wedge issues from Bush that Republicans have effectively used against us, on welfare, capital punishment, defense and spending," said Al From, president of the Democratic Leadership Council, which Mr. Clinton once chaired. Mr. Carville kept a large sign that read "The economy, stupid" over his desk at Clinton headquarters in Little Rock, Ark., to remind him that no issue mattered more than that one. "If Clinton had moved his focus away from the economy, there could have been a different result in this election," said Steve Gutow of the National Jewish Democratic Council. Unlike Mr. Bush, who tried a number of issues, Mr. Clinton never strayed from his focus on the middle class, even when he found himself under relentless attack from the Bush campaign on his character and experience. While his campaign responded quickly to every charge, he and his surrogates always steered discussion back to the economy, charging that each attack was a political diversion from the central economic problems facing the country. And middle-class voters were being targeted by the Democrats long before the 1992 campaign and Mr. Clinton's announcement that he would be a candidate. Democratic National Committee Chairman Ron Brown, in close coordination with Democratic congressional leaders, made the economy and middle-class concerns the themes of his speeches after he took over the committee in 1989. Mr. Brown ventured beyond his party's congressional leadership to promote a proposal to cut Social Security payroll taxes, a position that was endorsed by the DNC and Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, Maine Democrat, but opposed by the Bush administration. And more than a year before the 1992 election cycle began, Mr. Brown began putting together a coordinated presidential campaign infrastructure to be activated when the party's nominee was chosen. It included early polling, research services and a variety of state-by-state electoral strategies. "The time to begin work on the 1992 campaign is now," Mr. Brown said at the time, "not after the convention." This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM