T A B L E+T A L K The World Series 1998: Padres devotees spar with Yankees fans in Table Talk's Sports area   R E C E N T L Y No place to hide By Bruce Shapiro The arrest of the brutal ex-dictator Pinochet marks the first time since Nuremberg that a head of state faces legal responsibility for his mass killings (10/21/98) An open letter to Gore Vidal By Christopher Hitchens Why are you defending the Clintons, corporate America's love slaves? (10/20/98) Left Hook By Joe Conason The fate of New York Sen. Alfonse D'Amato might hinge on how strong the toxic blowback is from Capitol Hill's impeachment stink (10/20/98) My heterosexual dilemma By Richard Rodriguez Can someone please explain how flirting can lead to murder? (10/19/98) Web of hate By Ros Davidson Are Internet hate sites "the main culprit" behind the epidemic of hate crimes? (10/16/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.
		--------------Backlash '98? After dreading November's elections, some Democrats now believe they will benefit from an anti-impeachment voter rebellion. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BY JOAN WALSH Democrat Jay Inslee says the best idea in his uphill campaign to unseat U.S. Rep. Rick White came not from pollsters or pundits but from voters. The aspiring congressman from suburban Seattle made national news this week when he embraced the very issue experts had warned Democrats to run away from: He broadcast TV ads attacking his Republican opponent for supporting an unlimited impeachment inquiry against President Clinton. "I was hearing the same message at the farmer's markets and the ferry docks: People feel strongly that we need to get back to business, and beyond impeachment," Inslee says. So he overruled his campaign brain trust, which had opposed using the impeachment issue, and jumped onto the airwaves with a TV spot declaring, "Rick White and Newt Gingrich shouldn't be dragging us through this. Enough is enough." Nationally, pollsters and political experts predicted Democrats would rush to television studios with impeachment ads if Inslee's gambit paid off. "If it rains," one pollster told the Los Angeles Times, "it's going to pour." It's raining -- in Inslee's Seattle district, anyway. The challenger, who trailed White in the state's open primary by 6 percent, had closed the gap a little since then. But he jumped four points in the days after his aggressive ad was broadcast, to move slightly ahead of the incumbent two weeks before Election Day. "Yesterday a woman stopped her car in the middle of one of Seattle's busiest streets," a bemused Inslee recounts, "just to tell me, 'It's about time somebody had the guts to do this!'" A month after the punditocracy predicted the Monica Lewinsky scandal could cost Democrats as many as 30 seats in the House of Representatives, some strategists are saying the mess could work in the Democrats' favor, as scandal-weary voters use the election as a referendum on whether they want to watch congressional impeachment hearings drag on well into 1999. A relative handful of votes either way can matter: In 1996, 11 close elections that gave the Republicans their 11-seat majority were decided by a total of less than 12,000 votes. The boldest -- or most partisan -- among campaign strategists are even predicting that a national ground swell of disgust over the protracted impeachment debate could actually help Democrats gain seats. "Democrats should want their election campaigns to engage the impeachment issue," says a memo to Democrats from Clinton booster James Carville and Democratic pollsters Stan Greenberg and Al Quinlan. "Do not run from it. The impeachment inquiry is an opportunity." According to the three strategists, their poll of 800 voters in mid-October yielded good news for Democrats: The base of likely voters in the coming election who are Democrats rose from 31 to 36 percent of the electorate, compared to 31 percent Republicans. And after dropping in polls just after the release of independent counsel Kenneth Starr's report on the Lewinsky matter, Democrats nationwide have gained four points in the last month. Carville urges Democrats to grab the impeachment issue and ride it to victory. "These last two weeks are likely to be very different from what we have experienced up until now," Carville wrote in the memo. "Democrats have been on the defensive ... But now is the time to use every free media outlet you have because voters are ready to sit up and take notice. Hit the Republicans hard." To some Democrats, the best evidence that Carville and company are right comes from the relative Republican silence on the impeachment issue in the hundreds of congressional races around the country. Just over a month ago, strategists were predicting a blitz of TV ads featuring Clinton's many televised Lewinskyisms -- from denial to admission to semantic hair-splitting in his grand jury testimony. But since then GOP candidates have dropped the issue. The few Republicans who ran anti-Clinton ads quietly pulled them when they yielded no gains. But just as predictions of an impeachment-inspired Republican landslide proved to be wishful thinking, so might the Democrats' dreams of an impeachment backlash. Some Democrats and their supporters -- including one of Greenberg and Quinlan's clients -- question the idea that running hard on impeachment will help party candidates. The truth is no one understands the inscrutable midterm electorate. Traditionally, many fewer Americans vote in the elections held in between presidential campaigns -- turnout usually drops by half -- and those who do tend to be more conservative. While national polls show Democrats leading in the congressional races by several points, the advantage goes to Republicans when the polling universe is narrowed to likely voters. So far, there's little hard data to suggest this election will be a bellwether on impeachment. The real story might be that last month's hand-wringing over the Democrats' congressional chances, in the wake of the Starr Report revelations, had little basis in fact. There was no difference in Democratic turnout or election support in primaries held before the Starr Report and after according to Curtis Gans of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. And an analysis by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center in early September found that Republicans outnumbered Democrats among likely voters in this midterm election by eight points. But the gap was actually smaller than the 10-point difference polls found before the 1994 midterm. (Because Congress is already majority-Republican, where it was majority-Democrat in 1994, an outcome similar to 1994 would merely maintain the status quo, not doom Democrats.) Pew's latest poll, released yesterday, says the picture hasn't changed -- yet. "The supposed backlash against Congress hasn't made an iota of difference in local races," says Pew director Andrew Kohut. Republicans still hold a lead among likely voters, and in the 105 races analysts consider "competitive," the Republicans lead 48 to 44 percent. Even though voter opinion of Congress has "soured," Kohut says, leading to a decline in support for incumbents to 58 percent of registered voters from 66 percent last January, the percentage of voters who say they'll use the election to vote against Clinton rose from 16 percent to 23 percent. Meanwhile, only 19 percent say the Starr investigation is very important for the nation and only 3 percent say they want candidates to talk about Clinton during the campaign. Yet Kohut says the Carville strategy could pay off for Democrats in certain races. "If Democrats can bring it up in the right way, it could be effective. But right now the anger about impeachment is mostly confined to core Democratic constituencies -- who may not vote." N E X T+P A G E+| Who will vote? - - - - - - - - - - - - ILLUSTRATION BY TIM BOWER