The Political Interest: Why Clinton Is Catching On

The calls were made at around 5 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 6. "Bad news," one of Mario Cuomo's aides told George Friedman, the Democratic leader of the Bronx. "The Governor's out of it." Cracked Friedman: "Everybody knows that. Now tell me about his plans." Assured that the message was not about Cuomo's mental state and that the Governor really was pulling the plug on an incipient favorite-son presidential candidacy, Friedman and his Democratic machine colleagues across New York State were finally liberated to chart their own course. Five hours later a number of them, including Friedman, had thrown their support to Bill Clinton. By week's end even Representative Tom Manton, the Democratic leader of Cuomo's home county, Queens, was on board with the Arkansas Governor.

The man who brokered the endorsements was Harold Ickes Jr., a longtime liberal activist who has supported every far-left Democratic presidential candidate from Eugene McCarthy to Jesse Jackson. "When you consider Harold's politics and then the fact that Manton supported Bush on the gag rule on abortion, you have to concede that a coalition is being built," says Sarah Kovner, another New York liberal activist in Clinton's corner.

But why exactly is Clinton catching on across the Democrats' ideological spectrum? Why are the likes of Ickes and Manton and an increasing number of Democratic fat cats and trade-union leaders flocking to a centrist Southern Governor so soon after most of them swore they'd be long dead before either they or the country would again support another Deep South Democrat?

In part, Clinton's prominence is due to the flatness of the field around him. Massachusetts' Paul Tsongas will probably be considered a regional candidate even if he wins the Feb. 18 primary in next-door New Hampshire. Jerry Brown is still orbiting a distant planet. Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey has been tarnished by conflict-of-interest reports, his failure to flesh out a specific message beyond a comprehensive national health-care plan, and an emerging perception that he is little more than a biography in a suit. And then there is Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, whose embodiment of Rooseveltian notions of government intervention should command liberal loyalties. Instead Harkin is watching helplessly as crucial elements of what should be his core constituency, the country's leading white-collar union leaders, conclude that he is too strident and too liberal to appeal broadly in a general election. "Harkin sounds wonderful," says Lenore Miller, the head of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, who has signed on with Clinton. "But it's all too parochial."

It is the judgment about Harkin that best explains the rush to Clinton. It is as though the liberals who have dominated the Democrats' nominating process for 20 years have all grown up at once. "We've indulged our hearts long enough," says Ickes. "We've lost the White House and consoled ourselves with Democratic Congresses. But it's clear that when you control Congress you control nothing. We want to win, so we overlook things like Bill's support of the death penalty and the gulf war. It's that simple."