By mid April 1987 there were seven more or less heavyweight Democrats in the presidential race: Bruce Babbitt, Joseph Biden, Michael Dukakis, Richard Gephardt, Albert Gore Jr., Gary Hart, Paul Simon. This year, same time, there is one about-to-declare candidate, ex-Sen. Paul Tsongas of Mass.; one watertester, former Sen. and presidential standard-bearer George McGovern; one might-be candidate, Gov. Douglas Wilder of Va. (he has registered a fund-raising committee with the FEC); but not a single Democrat who was considered a serious contender six months ago. . . . Recent poll in Iowa, the early caucus state, shows little enthusiasm for anyone: Cuomo leads with 10 per cent, followed by Bentsen 8 per cent, McGovern 5, Gephardt and John Silber 3, Bradley, Jackson, Mitchell, and Tsongas 2; Dukakis, Gore, Nunn, and Wilder 1. . . . Inside the Beltway it’s suggested the Dems trade in their donkey for a sacrificial lamb. . . . Political analyst Everett Carll Ladd of the Roper Center says Democratic Party has run into what he calls a “generational base” roadblock. Just as a majority of Americans who came of voting age from the New Deal through the mid Seventies, says Ladd, called themselves Democrats, so, of Americans who came of voting age from 1975 on, 34 per cent more call themselves Republicans than Democrats. Even among blacks, who continue to be lopsidedly Democratic, there is a generational tilt away from the Democrats, i.e., 67 per cent more blacks sixty and over consider themselves Democrats than Republicans; in the 18-to-29-year bracket that figure is down to 37 per cent. . . . Washington Post political reporter Thomas Edsall makes point that as the Democrats are perceived to be the party of the unemployed, the elderly, the poor, and the homeless, they are in danger of becoming “quite literally dependent on economic setbacks, or the threat of economic failure, to win elections.” . . . Sheldon Goldman, a political scientist who monitors judicial appointments, points out another Democratic vulnerability. If George Bush is reelected, by 1996 two-thirds of all federal judges will have been appointed by Reagan or Bush. Two up and just the legislative branch to go.
Hard times for bad guys: Of the 3,200 Soviet technicians and specialists working in the field in Cuba a year ago January, only one thousand were left by April 1991. . . . John Hughes of Christian Science Monitor says experts predict Cuba’s GNP will be down 25 to 30 per cent this year as a result of cutback of Soviet and Eastern European aid and general socialist mismanagement. . . . Although Fidel Castro had a field day when Sam Nujoma of Namibia, another former Soviet client, blew into Havana to pick up José Martí award a fortnight back, Castro and the Cubans have been eased out of ceasefire negotiations in Angola, where over a million Cubans served in the Eighties. . . . One reason why Soviets have not completely severed ties with Castro, say military experts, is high value they put on their electronic eavesdropping base at Lourdes, just outside Havana. . . . Meanwhile the democratic governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama have abolished visa requirements for entry into their countries for all Central Americans. . . . The Salvadoran legislature has passed a bill restoring the banking system to private ownership. The banks were nationalized in 1980 to help pay for mismanaged land reform. . . . Reports from Ethiopia indicate Marxist dictator Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam is on his last legs, has sent his family for safety to Zimbabwe as rebel forces move in on Addis Ababa. . . . The Gulf states have suspended all aid to Yasir Arafat’s PLO and to King Hussein of Jordan. The PLO had been receiving $72 million a year from Saudi Arabia, $24 million from Kuwait, and $48 million from Iraq. … In Norway, Inge Leoning of the University of Oslo has presented an alternative Norwegian peace prize of nearly half a million dollars to Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis in obvious rebuke to the Nobel committee for giving the official peace prize to Mikhail Gorbachev.
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