Can He Take The House?

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Gephardt intends to make that happen one race at a time, if that's what it takes. As miles of soybean and cornfields slid past his window last week, he pored over talking points, memorizing which candidates wanted him to stress corporate responsibility, which wanted him to hammer their opponents on Medicare. In spare moments he coached others by cell phone: "You need to tell what happened in the House--the drug companies wrote the bill, and they wouldn't even let us bring up our alternative. It's a total capitulation to special interests! Keep going."

Democrats say economic anxiety will attract voters to their party on a host of issues, from health care to the environment. But they know from experience that none packs a wallop like Social Security. It could be their nuclear weapon in a year when Americans have seen their 401(k)s vaporize. So at each stop in Iowa, a state with plenty of seniors and perhaps the greatest concentration of hot congressional races, Gephardt lambasted Bush's plan to allow people to invest part of their Social Security taxes in the market. "Over my dead body will they be able to do it!" he roared.

But Republicans have managed to blur the differences on many other issues, from education to prescription drugs. So the Democrats, observes political consultant Rachel Gorlin, have "got to put something on the table." Gephardt agrees. His top aides began strategizing on a splashy list of bold policy promises last week, something like the brash Contract with America, which Newt Gingrich and the Republican candidates rode to victory in 1994. But many Democrats, particularly in rural districts where so many of the swing races are being fought, are resisting anything that ties them too closely to a national party that veers left of where most of their voters live. Some, like Iowa Democratic challenger Julie Thomas, say they will do better on local concerns, like Medicare reimbursement formulas that short-change her state.

Across the Capitol, majority leader Tom Daschle's forces are worried that big new promises would raise an uncomfortable question as they struggle to maintain their one-vote hold on the chamber: If these are such great ideas, why hasn't the Democratic Senate passed them? An in-your-face assault on Bush's economic policies would reopen one issue that national Democratic leaders have been eager to avoid: Would Democrats cancel the remaining installments of his tax cut?

Even if the Democrats get the message right, they remain far behind the Republicans in raising the money to get it out. Gephardt urges his candidates to hold back spending on television commercials until the end, an idea he took from Gingrich's '94 playbook. The key to Democratic victories will be turnout, he says. In Iowa the party has invested millions in computer software so workers can ply towns and neighborhoods each evening, PalmPilot in hand, hunting down Democratic voters, especially any who want absentee ballots, ensuring that they have returned them, even offering to deliver the ballots to polling places. In the post-campaign-finance-reform world, "this is the future of the Democratic Party," Gephardt says.