After the Gold Rush

          Furthermore, most economists not on the White House payroll are expecting an economic downturn by the end of the second quarter of 1997, which means that voters will blame Clinton and the Democrats for the economy's woes in '98. By the year 2000, Republicans will have cemented their majorities with six years of incumbency, gorging themselves as the majority Democrats once did with PAC money. Obviously we should not expect any real campaign finance reform from the new Congress next year. Even if Democrats manage to hold the White House with the seemingly inevitable Al Gore, the GOP will in all probability retain congressional control. After that, it will take a major economic depression to dislodge them.

          In the wake of this year's voting, Clinton campaign top guns like Peter Knight, Doug Sosnick, and Doug Schoen openly boasted that the key to their victory was their gargantuan fund-raising operation in 1995. Clinton's overfilled coffers frightened off any potential Democratic primary challenge, saving him a wounding internecine struggle and permitting him to spend at least $1 million a week on TV ads from June 1995 right through to the Democratic Convention in Chicago.

          But in their reckless haste to win the money primary, the Clintonoids created the Indogate/Huang campaign contributions scandal for which voters--unable to stomach Dole--punished congressional Democrats, as pre- and post-election polls show. If, as I suspect, this year's results presage a new and unbreakable Republican era in Congress, that will turn out to have been Bill Clinton's most important legacy.