Democrats Highlight Prominent Liberals

L O S   A N G E L E S, Aug. 15, 2000 -- On a day when President Clinton symbolically handed Al Gore the leadership of the Democratic party, its members gathered to showcase the strongest voices of its liberal wing and to define the stakes of the forthcoming election.

On the second night of the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley told those who passionately supported his primary fight to swallow their pride and stay motivated because “Now we’re in the general election and it’s absolutely essential that we get behind Al Gore.”

Bradley also presented Republicans and Democrats in stark contrast, suggesting that Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush’s efforts to appear compassionate were mere window dressing.

“But this election is not just a choice between two individuals,” Bradley said. “It’s a choice between two philosophies of leadership.It’s a choice between a Republican Party that is determined to give the fruits of our hard-won prosperity to those who don’t need the help and a Democratic Party that promises to use this great opportunity to provide care for the ill, to lift up millions from poverty, to heal the racial divide and to ensure that every child has a decent public school.”

Beating the Bushes

Rev. Jesse Jackson, another of the left’s leaders and one of the party’s most powerful speakers, ridiculed the GOP candidate and son of the former president as “Baby Bush,” leading delegates in a chant of “America, Stay out of the Bushes!”

The Bush campaign quickly denounced Jackson’s remarks as the “ type of partisanship andbitterness the country would prefer to leave behind.”

Bush campaign spokesman Ari Fleischer said in an e-mail fired off immediately following Jackson’s speech: “If Vice President Gore was serious about renouncing personal attacks and unkind words, he shouldn’t have allowed his surrogates to do it for him.”

Camelot Revisited

Four decades after John F. Kennedy came to Los Angeles to accept the Democratic nomination and rally Americans to confront the “New Frontier,” his only living brother, Sen. Ted Kennedy, and only living child, Caroline, invoked the fallen president’s memory on behalf of Gore.

Bringing to five the number of Kennedys speaking before the convention this week, Sen. Kennedy said the nation’s next generation “faces its own new frontier.” Even as he invoked the image of his late brother, Kennedy called Republicans a party of the past and called for action on an issue the Democrats believe is the most powerful of the election: Health care.

“Forty years from this night, may a future generation look back on this time and this convention and say that it was here, under the leadership of Al Gore, that we set forth to secure for all our citizens the fundamental right to health care — that here we kept the faith on our journey of hope and America dared to dream again.”

After taking the stage to the theme from Camelot, Caroline Kennedy delivered a more personal speech. “It is up to each and every single one of us to leave this convention and work as hard as we can to help Al Gore create the America of our ideals,” she said. “Because, let me tell you, that ‘somebody else’s government’ is not what we want.”

Earlier in the day, Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and environmentalist Robert Kennedy, Jr. — both children of Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in this city while campaigning for president in 1968 — spoke before the convention.

Not His Father’s Ford

Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford — the youngest member of Congress at age 30, was introduced as “the voice of the future” to deliver the keynote address. This rising black political star from Gore’s home state said the election would decide the future of “children in kindergartens in Memphis and across our nation.”

“Yes, there will be talk during the campaign of budget surplusesand tax cuts, but it’s really all about them,” Ford said.“ With those 5 year olds in mind, our first step inencouraging their dreams and unleashing their imaginations is electing Al Gore our next president.”

In the audience tonight was Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Gore’s running mate. Lieberman is scheduled to deliver his speech to the convention on Wednesday night. It remains unclear whether Lieberman will use his moment in the spotlight to play the No. 2’s traditional role of attack dog — as did GOP vice-presidential candidate, Dick Cheney, at the Republican convention in Philadelphia two weeks ago.

Passing the Baton

In a stage-managed event in Michigan this afternoon, Clinton ceded the limelight to his vice president, who is headed west to accept his party’s presidential nomination on Thursday.

“Every good thing that has happened that came out of our administration over the last eight years, Al Gore was at the heart of it,” Clinton said before he and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton waved goodbye and walked off stage, leaving Gore and his wife, Tipper, alone before a crowd of adoring supporters.

At the event in Monroe, Mich. — a blue-collar town of swing voters — Gore latched his legacy to Clinton’s own, praising the president for the booming economy and contending that only he can keep the good times rolling.

“Bill Clinton worked hard to get this economy right, with the help of the American people,” Gore said. “I’m not going to let the other side wreck it.”

ABCNEWS’ Linda Douglass contributed to this report.