From the WSJ Opinion Archives
A Democrat Tilts Toward Nader
BURBANK, Calif.--In 1972, 21-year-old Pat Caddell became the chief pollster for Democratic nominee George McGovern. He went on to do polling and strategy work for Jimmy Carter, Mario Cuomo, Jerry Brown and Gary Hart. He has since left politics for a job as creative consultant for the hit show "West Wing," which is about the kind of idealistic liberal president Mr. Caddell longs for. In his view, Mr. Clinton doesn't measure up.
Over lunch just outside the NBC Studios here, Mr. Caddell expresses his disgust with the spectacle of big money, big pandering and big shots that he's watched in his adopted city of Los Angeles for the last week. "Al Gore is running a Harry Truman-style populist campaign against powerful, hidden interests," he says as he waves his form dramatically in the air. "But they're really saying: Pay no attention to those corporations behind the curtain holding all the parties for them and raising all the money."
Mr. Caddell's favorite example: the Occidental Petroleum party that was held at the Armand Hammer art museum during the convention. Hammer, a longtime friend of Sen. Al Gore Sr., the vice president's father, gave the elder Gore a job after he lost his Senate seat.
Mr. Caddell says the Gore strategy of railing against the modern version of FDR's "economic royalists" will excite the Democratic base, but may not get him the swing voters he needs because so many of them now own stock in the corporations that Mr. Gore bashed at the convention: insurance, HMO's, drug and oil concerns. Class warfare doesn't always work with Democrats, as Rep. Dick Gephardt found out in 1988.
To the extent that appeals to economic populism do resonate, there is the danger they will drive some voters toward Ralph Nader, whom no one can accuse of collaborating with big corporations. Mr. Caddell himself is leaning toward Mr. Nader, after concluding that the in the Clinton-Gore years the Democrats have ceded much of the moral high ground they used to hold when it came to standing up to economic interests.
"Should the Democratic Party lose in 2000, they will have to do a reality check and perhaps realize that drifting into the arms of corporate America may get you the bucks but not enough votes to win," he says. "For liberals, a Gore loss may be the best wakeup call possible for the Democratic Party."
