Don't be fooled again.

• Author: Cockburn, Alexander
• Position: Projections on what President Clinton would do in a second term - Column

It's 2000 A.D., sometime in July. We're in the final year of Clinton's second term, and the battle rages over Social Security and Medicare. The bipartisan commissions, which President Bill suitably stacked with Wall Streeters and icons of the planned-shrinkage crowd, have issued their collective and predictable judgment: Only by fierce cuts can these entitlements survive. Though polls have shown the public to be strongly supportive of these programs, the national press and big Washington think tanks launch a strident campaign in favor of promoting the "crisis."

After prolonged battles, both Senate and House vote for cutbacks. Clinton deliberates whether to sign the bill. At the very moment when fierce pressure from the liberal public-interest groups in Washington might push Clinton into a veto with every chance of success, Vice President A1 Gore issues a passionate plea: Nothing can be done to mar party unity, or to expose it to charges that it is once again hostage to "the special interests."

The liberal advocates sit on their hands. At the one-day Democratic Party convention in Cleveland, Jesse Jackson rails, but stays aboard. Jim Hightower says you don't have to be a dead armadillo to dance with Al Gore (challenging the general view that only a dead armadillo would have the patience for such a pastime).

Bill Clinton, in the midst of his run for U.N. Secretary-General and preoccupied with Republican charges that he is about to pardon Hillary Rodham, says it's a simple choice: Would Democrats rather have Social Security and Medicare cuts supervised by Al Gore or by his Republican opponent? Gore pledges to "take another look" the minute he enters the Oval Office.

The last fragments of the New Deal are destroyed. The Democratic Party remains united. The liberals sit on their hands. Al Gore . . . well, that's another story.

Of course, by the time this issue of The Progressive is headed into the recycling bin, Bob Dole may have been elected--though at the time of this writing his campaign is drifting like a death ship in the Sargasso Sea. Under President Dole the preceding scenario is a non-starter. The Democrats would muster themselves to defend the New Deal. Bill Clinton would be running for Baseball Commissioner or maybe working as a golf pro at the course back in Hot Springs. So vote for Bob Do . . .

Stick with the probabilities. We're not dealing here with that brief, dark spasm of inner debate and spiritual compromise that no doubt prompts some, perhaps many, Progressive readers to go with the Democratic ticket on November 5. Our focus here is on what happens in the years that separate these brief engagements with the ballot box.

Stay with the opening scenario. On September 19, 1996, Bill Clinton announced on the front page of USA Today that he wants his "legacy" to be reform of Social Security and Medicare. He says that he'll appoint bipartisan commissions.

Here's what will happen in the case of Social Security: The bipartisan commission will take the most pessimistic assumptions of the Trustees of the Social Security System in their annual report. Read the fine print (or, more profitably, read Doug Henwood's very useful explications in Left Business Observer and in his forthcoming book, Wall Street) and you find that the worst-case...