Can Democrats get their groove back? It won't be easy. Any party deprived of the presidential bully pulpit has trouble speaking in one voice, and for Democrats, unity violates the party's tradition, if not its rules. With Democrats in minority status in both houses, Bush need not traffic with their leaders. He can pick and choose among more pliable, conservative Blue Dogs or New Democrats who are happy to deal. The loss of the White House also means a devastating loss in research and policy capacity.

Moreover, despite the new president's continuing travails with the English language, Democrats shouldn't, as Bush put it, "misunderestimate him." This administration has mastered the ability to play Bill Clinton's music while marching to Ronald Reagan's drummer. The back-alley mugging of labor already underway is only the beginning of what will be a bare-knuckled, no-holds-barred assault designed to weaken the majority coalition.

This reality renders the advice Democrats have been hearing from pundits and pollsters virtually worthless. Americans, they've been told, want an end to partisan bickering in Washington, and Democrats should work to find common ground with Bush. "Internal consensus," they're told, is essential for the party to speak with one voice. Democrats, it is argued, can gain by being the responsible party, seeking bipartisan consensus, offering a smaller tax cut, a more reasonable budget and greater fiscal prudence.

Nonsense. The only hope for Democrats is if their progressive base leads the party into fierce opposition. For a play-book, they'd be smart to remember what conservatives did in 1992, when Clinton was elected and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress.

From day one, movement conservatives outside Congress declared open season on Clinton. They organized aggressive opposition research, scouring the countryside and the past for anything that might discredit him or throw the administration off its game.

Inside Congress, the conservative minority ignored Republican leaders who called for bipartisan cooperation. While then-Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole was endorsing the goal of universal health care, conservatives were joining with health maintenance organizations and insurance companies to plot its demise. Republicans voted unanimously against Clinton's first budget plan, even though it was virtually a rewrite of the bipartisan compromise signed by President George Bush years earlier.

Congressional conservatives, led by then-Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), put forth their own agenda. Gingrich rallied the Christian Coalition and other radical-right groups to support tax cuts, deregulation, an end to welfare and term limits, which eventually became provisions of his 1994 "contract with America."

Finally, supposedly moderate Republicans were put on notice: If they strayed too often to vote with the administration or Democrats in Congress, they could anticipate a well-funded primary challenge--even if that risked losing a GOP seat in the general election. For the most part, the moderates got the message. Party unity was forged not from the top down in centrist compromise, but from the bottom up by right-wing muscle.

Progressives have every reason to learn from this playbook. Bush has presented himself as more moderate than he is. Now he is running a conservative takeover for which he has no mandate, endorsing policies--like reinstating the "global gag rule" on family planning overseas--that come as a shock even to some of his own supporters.

More important, Bush is paddling upstream against the tide of opinion. Voters didn't buy the president's agenda in the election; Al Gore's message and agenda were far more popular. Bush has no mandate for his tax cuts for the wealthy, his stealth cuts in spending, the oil industry's takeover of government, his rollback of women's right to choose or his assault on working people.

No one objects to a little tax relief. But if Americans were asked how to spend $555 billion over 10 years, they might choose to provide the fifth child--the one in five children born into poverty--with a healthy start. They might choose smaller classes and better teachers and modern schools for their kids. They might choose to ensure that their parents could afford the medicines that they need. But they would not make Bush's choice and give the money to approximately 1.4 million households (the top 1%) that are already among the wealthiest in the world.

For this argument to be joined, progressive groups outside and inside Congress should get in Bush's face. He's allowed right-wing zealots like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' wife to vet his appointees. They should be investigated, and the outrageous opposed and blocked. No president selected by the gang of five on the Supreme Court has a right to name more activist conservative justices to that court and pad his partisan advantage for the next era.

Progressives need to build the research capacity to expose the Bush administration for what it is, revealing its conflicts of interests, corruption and greed that will stain it. They need to go into campaign mode, to ensure that Americans learn exactly who is getting the gold and who is getting the shaft. Finally, congressional progressives need to put forth a bold agenda for economic growth, fair taxes, investment in our future, political reform--and make Democrats the party that fights for working people once again.

At the center of this debate will be the faltering economy and Bush's wrong-headed tax plan. Democrats should stop defending the Clinton economy and start working to fend off the Bush recession. This is an argument about the direction of the country, not accounting. The question is one of unmet needs and national priorities, not simply debt reduction.

Progressives must expose the cynical lie that Bush's tax cut, most of which won't even kick in for several years, will stimulate the economy. Instead of arguing for a slower process and a smaller tax cut, progressives should be pushing for a bigger rebate now, one aimed at middle- and low-income families, but one that won't explode in the out years. The best policy would be to contrast Bush's backloaded, top-heavy tax cuts for the rich with a one-year prosperity dividend of $500 for every man, woman and child in America. That puts more money into the hands of middle- and low-income Americans to kick-start the economy in the short term, won't break the bank in the out years and doesn't steal from vital needs to hand the wealthiest Americans an annual $40,000 tax break.

The first response of Republicans--and a shameless number of Democrats--to the economic downturn was to pass legislation making it easier for credit-card companies and other creditors to collect from distressed families forced into bankruptcy. Progressives should be pushing legislation to help distressed families avoid bankruptcy, financing a debt-relief mechanism that gives families reeling from layoffs, illness or divorce a chance to get back on their feet.

The talking classes decry such advice as poisonous partisanship, certain to undermine civility, turn Americans off and drive good people from public life. But Bush has made it clear he plans, without any mandate, to pursue an audacious far-right makeover of the country. To prevent that, fierce and unrelenting opposition is required. Good manners may suffer, but the country will benefit. And Democrats may just get their blood moving again.

Robert L. Borosage is a founder of the Campaign for America's Future and co-editor of the forthcoming book "The Next Agenda."

Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times

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