So long, senators: the Democrats flirt with disaster in 1996.

• Author: Nichols, John
• Position: Includes Sen Paul Wellstone's strategy for Democratic Senate candidates

In the kingdom they once ruled, the Democrats of the U.S. Senate are fast becoming an endangered species. And another electoral disaster like 1994 will rob Senate Democrats of their ability to block even the most destructive codicils of the Contract With America.

If that happens, the "you-ain't-seen-nothing-yet" fantasy of the Republican right could well become America's reality.

The Senate currently is split 54 to 46 in favor of the Republicans. The only obstacle to the Republican juggernaut is the coalition of Democrats and a handful of "moderate" Republicans who are not quite comfortable with gutting environmental protection, throwing poor children into orphanages, and redistributing income to the rich via a sweeping tax cut.

Even if the "moderates" weren't around, however, the arcane rules of the Senate would still provide some level of protection. As the initial debate over the balanced-budget amendment illustrated, the Democrats hold just enough seats to stave off the most horrific Republican onslaughts. The magic number for the Republicans is sixty seats, the amount they need to invoke "cloture" - the parliamentary trump card that allows the majority party to shut off debate and bring any bill to a vote' Once they pass the sixty mark, Republicans will be able to ramrod their agenda through the Senate, and progressive Democrats will be afl but powerless to oppose them with traditional tools such as filibusters.

Unfortunately, Democratic bigwigs seem to be making precisely the strategic and ideological mistakes that will give Republicans the votes they need to cut loose and seriously mutate our politics.

Phil Duncan, who edits Congressional Quarterly's "Politics In America" publications, is one of a growing number of political observers painting ominous scenarios for the Democrats. He suggests that the 1996 election could leave the party in its worst shape since 1911.

"It's really difficult to see how the Democrats don't end up losing some ground in the Senate in 1996. The only question is how much," he says. "If the bottom drops out of Bill Clinton's reelection campaign, the Republicans could really start moving, and you could see them getting up to the sixty-seat level."

Fifteen Senate seats currently held by Democrats are up for election in 1996. Five entrenched Democratic Senators - Howell Heflin of Alabama, Jim Exon of Nebraska, J. Bennett Johnston of Louisiana, David Pryor of Arkansas, and Paul Simon of Illinois - have announced their retirements, and all of their seats are pegged as vulnerable to Republican takeovers. Six additional Democratic Senators are considered highly vulnerable to Republican challenges, and several may quit rather than fight.

Of the eighteen Republican seats up for election in 1996, only one incumbent is stepping down - hank Brown of Colorado - and no more than four incumbent Republicans are seen as vulnerable.

If the Republicans hold their seats as they did in 1994, and if Democrats lose the seats of the five retirees and just one of the vulnerable incumbents, the G.O.P. will reach the sixty-vote plateau for the first time in eighty-five years.

"Face it, the Republicans with an overwhelming majority in the Senate is a scary thought for a whole lot of Americans," says Senator Paul Wellstone, a progressive Democrat from Minnesota, who faces a reelection fight next year. "But that's what this 1996 election is going to decide. That's why we have to get serious about it early."

What is to blame for the current circumstance? Not Republican wizardry, nor fickle voting habits. The fault lies not in the stars, but with the Democrats themselves.

Already, they are repeating the mistakes of the past. Party leaders have been recruiting traditional candidates, who are so compromised by their own insider status and by their obsession with fundraising that they are incapable of making the sort of populist appeals that build effective coalitions. As a result, the Democrats are inviting a political disaster far more frightening than anything that occurred in 1994.

Just ask Phil Gramm.

Before he became the great right hope of Presidential politics, the Texan chaired the powerful National Republican Senatorial Committee. On Gramm's watch, all eleven freshmen in the Class of 1994 Senators were Republicans - the first all-republican group since 1914, when the direct election of Senators began.

Now that he has set his sights on Bill Clinton's job, Gramm confesses that - for all the bravado he brought to his old job - beating Democratic Senate candidates was actually a breeze. Flashing the sort of grin snakes reserve for the moment before they devour...