That's precisely Clinton's political strategy as he begins his final campaign.

Wooing Moderates

The party's liberal wing has no place to go. So the president is targeting moderate voters, who might defect to Dole or an independent like Ross Perot.

One of them is 80-year-old delegate Hilda Kaye Burtis of central Texas. Burtis, like many delegates in the South, applauds the President's decision to end "welfare as we know it" and to "mend, not end" affirmative action programs.

"I'm not a bleeding heart liberal," said Burtis, who manages a 325-acre potato farm with the help of her two daughters. "A person should be responsible for himself, and the government doesn't owe us anything."

"There was a time when the welfare state made sense. But now, federal handouts just make people lazy. We experimented inthe Depression and the '60s. But now it's almost 2000. It's time to come home," she said.

While many Southerners call themselves "yellow dog Democrats," meaning they would sooner vote for a yellow dog than any Republican, the region has gradually swung behind the GOP in presidential elections.

"We were just quiet, and we let some radicals take over in the '70s and '80s," said 33-year-old delegate Sara Bailey King, a special education teacher in east Texas. "Eighty percent of us call ourselves Democrats because we're working people who want to keep the safety."

Southerners and other moderates soundly rejected past Democratic presidential candidates like George S. McGovern, Walter F. Mondale and Michael S. Dukakis, who were perceived as extreme leftists on economic and social issues.

AFL-CIO President John McSweeney stood with Clinton during the Democratic Convention, symbolizing their partnership, which Clinton solidified witha minimum wage hike and additional tax credits for the working poor.

His moderation is more visible on social issues.

Family values are in, and Clinton has used the presidential bully pulpit to wage war against television violence, to call for teen curfews, and to support the use of school uniforms.

King, describing her part of Texas as "church-going, family values country," said Clinton must continue these moves to the center--but in doing so must maintain his distance from Congressional Republicans.

"People in my world want moderation, not rollback. Republicans want to turn back the moral clock to 50 years ago, banning books and all, and that don't sit right," she said.

A Family Man