Tackling the Teflon President

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Mondale is counting on help from a truly effective orator: Jesse Jackson. The Jackson camp believes that its man encouraged some 2 million more blacks to vote in this year's primaries than ever before. In Pennsylvania, TV exit polls showed that blacks cast 18% of the total vote, up from 12% in 1980. The black vote could be crucial, especially in the South. Jackson and Mondale partisans use the same appealing but flawed arithmetic: if only 10% more blacks vote in five Southern states lost by Carter in 1980, the Democrat could win them all. The trouble is, that presumes Mondale will be able to win as many white votes in the South as Native Son Carter did. It also presumes that Reagan's support is static, when in fact large numbers of conservative Southern whites have registered to vote in the past several years.

To win, Mondale will have to sell his campaign of compassion beyond its natural constituency. Most polls show jthat Reagan and Mondale can each safely count on about one-third of the 'voters. The election will be won or lost in the battle over the middle third. Many in this swing group are Hart supporters, including his hard core of "yumpies"—younger upwardly mobile professionals. Ominously, exit polls found that more than a third of the Hart voters in California and New Jersey would vote for Reagan, or not at all, if Mondale is the nominee. The Mondale camp believes that their minds will change when the heat of the primary race dissipates and Hart voters look more closely at Reagan's policies. "It's no longer the great yumpie in the sky. It's Walter Mondale or Ronald Reagan," says Tim Russert, counselor to New York Governor Mario Cuomo. Hart's followers, naturally, will be more likely to vote for Mondale if Hart is with him on the ticket (see following story).

The middle third of undecided voters is largely middle class. Mondale's task will be to make them identify with those left behind by the Reagan revolution. "When Reagan says, 'Are you better off?' he's talking to people who got the big tax cuts," declares Mondale. "What I want to ask Americans is not whether you happen to be among those who got a better commercial deal for yourself, but are we better off?"

Yet to many voters watching Reagan's television ads that portray a Norman Rockwell America in the summer of '84, glowing with prosperity and joy, the answer is a resounding yes. In good times, middle-class voters usually look up, not down.

What the Mondale campaign really needs is for the country to suffer a severe economic jolt or a foreign policy disaster. Says Texas Political Consultant George Christian, former press secretary to President Lyndon Johnson: "Mondale needs the big one—the big blowup in the Middle East, the big interest-rate jump—to turn this thing around. If it's just business as usual, he's not going to make it." Verbal stumbles by the President, or gloomy warnings that he has mortgaged the future with those heavy deficits, are not enough. For Reagan's magic to wear off, voters must actually feel the effect of his mistakes. In the end, the election is more Reagan's to lose than Mondale's to win. Says Iowa Democrat Nagle: "The chances for victory are out of our hands."