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Subject: For Democrats, Flush of Victory Has Unfamiliar Feel<By John F.
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 92 05:06:14 EST
Message-ID: <34.1992Nov6.050614@AmeriCast.com>

For Democrats, Flush of Victory Has Unfamiliar Feel<By John F.
Harris<Washington Post Staff Writer<

It's as if the natural order of things has somehow been rear-
ranged. Here it is early November, and Colleen Martin should be
in the midst of her quadrennial post-election funk.

Martin crashed with Carter in 1980, moped for Mondale in 1984,
and slipped into a severe case of Dukakis-depression four years
ago. This year - in a turn of events so foreign she can't quite
believe it herself - the District lawyer, 36, is forced to ack-
nowledge, "I feel ecstatic."

She voted for Bill Clinton. At last, she backed a winner.

Martin is part of a generation of Democrats in their twenties and
thirties who have spent their adult lives voting for presidential
losers. Some, like Martin, were barely out of adolescence when
they cast their sole winning vote for Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Others, like 29-year-old John E. Young, a local environmental
writer, have spent their entire lives in the political wilder-
ness, feeling nothing but remorse for the losers, nothing but
disdain for the winners.

So sorrowful has been their experience that they wouldn't even
allow themselves to believe in the past few weeks that they were
on the threshold of victory, even when it was clear from polls
that Clinton was the likely winner.

Martin said she was too tense to accept invitations to election
night parties. "I had to be right there, focused in front of the
TV," she said.

Who can blame her, given the history.  "Dukakis hit very hard,"
she recalled. "I was in deep clinical depression for several
days."

Like many others her age, Martin felt envious about missing the
high tide of liberalism in the 1960s and '70s. "I was too young
to embrace all that idealism," she said. "I felt cheated out of
it."

Young, a native of Washington state who moved to the District in
1985, has felt the same sense of detachment - intensified by what
he sees as the hostility of Republican administrations to his
passion, improving the environment.

"I've spent my entire career since I got out of college feeling
like I was tilting at windmills," he said.

Young and some friends may indeed have been tilting a bit when
they showed up outside the White House gates about 1:30 Wednesday
morning. An impromptu crowd was banging on drums, dancing in a
circle, and chanting, "No more Bush!"

"We were feeling no pain," said Young.

Reed Stockman, a 34-year-old Democratic activist from Arlington,
remembers vividly an evening that went the other way. It was
election night 1980, and Stockman was in charge of a cash bar at
a party to raise money for the Young Democrats.  As the size of
the Carter debacle became clear, Stockman and his friends gave up
and opened the bar to all comers.

"It was sad," he said. "People just sat around and told war
stories."

He never guessed that it would be 12 long years before he would
have a chance to toast his joy rather than drown his sorrows on
election night.

"It's fun to win one for a change," he said.  "This is exciting."

Robin Jackson, a District lawyer who cast her first vote ever for
a winning presidential candidate, didn't indulge in an election
night Bacchanalia. But she did keep herself glued to the televi-
sion set late into the evening.

"You stay up all night watching the returns because you have
something to look forward to, rather than going to bed at eight,"
she said.  As one who was "depressed and embarrassed" by the
Dukakis disaster in 1988, Jackson knows better than to gloat this
time. "I feel sorry for the Republicans at this point," she said.

She described losing an election as being "like someone's run you
over, and you didn't see the car coming."

Not surprisingly, some are a little reluctant to step back into
traffic.

Kitty Stone, a 34-year-old freelance editor from Montgomery Clin-
ton "seemed to be in the mainstream . . . .  He's not from the
same generation as the typical Democratic sacrificial lamb."

- Michael O'Rourke>

County and a Clinton backer, refused to concede victory until
late Tuesday evening. "I was too superstitious," she said. "When
he was at 246 electoral votes, I still didn't allow myself to be-
lieve it . . . .  California hadn't come in yet."

It's not just political laymen who held enthusiasm in check. Vir-
ginia Lt. Gov. Donald S. Beyer Jr., who at age 42 has cast only
one vote for a winning presidential candidate, admitted, "I was
actively working hard on disbelieving it." Beyer, an early Clin-
ton backer in Virginia, said he feared to the end that Bush might
snare reelection by disemboweling Clinton with negative advertis-
ing.

But the Bush attack didn't work. Many people interviewed yester-
day voted for Clinton with enthusiasm, not as the least of three
evils.  Michael O'Rourke, a 34-year-old employee at the Warner
Theatre in downtown Washington, said he always had considered
himself a Democrat but never bothered to vote before Tuesday. "It
didn't seem like there was any point," he said. "Anybody I would
have voted for was going to lose to Reagan or Bush." "Clinton,"
he said, "seemed to be in the mainstream . . . .  He's not from
the same generation as the typical Democratic sacrificial lamb."

If experience has taught some Democrats to be wary on election
night, the lack of it has allowed others to be a bit brash.
Michael Day, a 25-year-old Annandale resident, is one for two in
presidential elections. He cast an unenthusiastic vote for
Dukakis, but was convinced that Clinton was a winner early on.
"Here was someone who was saying what I believed in," Day said.
"I knew Bill Clinton could do it from the beginning."

02:27 11-06C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
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