At Retreat, Clinton Tries to Rally House Democrats

LEESBURG, Va. - “We miss you!” someone in the audience of House Democrats shouted at the 42nd president of the United States.

“Sometimes,” he responded, “I miss you.”

Former President Bill Clinton visited here on Friday morning to rally House Democrats at their annual retreat. And while he injected a healthy dose of energy into the crowd - which thanked him with a long standing ovation, longer than the one given to President Obama the day before - Mr. Clinton also dispensed some tough love.

Sure, it’s easy to revel in the Republicans’ recent political setbacks now, he said. But the Republican Party they will face in 2014 when Democrats hope they can regain control of the House will not be as weak, he warned.

“We should assume going forward that the people who disagree with us honestly in our approach will not make it quite as easy,” he said, noting how Republicans had already signaled that they were moderating their views on issues like immigration in hopes of depriving Democrats the opportunity to paint them as extreme on the issue.

“It’s easy to sneer at that,” he added. “This strategy of theirs is not necessarily guaranteed to fail.”

In many ways, there was no one better positioned ! to warn House Democrats about the potential traps that await them in the 2014 midterm elections. During Mr. Clinton’s first midterm election in 1994, Republicans seized control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

Mr. Clinton offered up some of the lessons of that experience - and how those might help explain the Democrats’ loss of the House in 2010. He said he had been campaigning for Democrats in 2010 when he realized things were not going their way.

“I remember I told Hillary somewhere in the process of it that, you know, we’re going to take a terrible lickin’. And she said, ‘Well, why aren’t you agreeing to do more events’ I said I don’t want it on my conscience. I did this in ’94.”

But elections, he said, are just one step in the process of political evolution. And he encouraged them to think beyond 2014.

“I want you to think about what you’re going to do the next two years, where you’re going to end up and how this is part o a long-term struggle,” he told them at the beginning of a speech that went on for more than 40 minutes.

“You have to understand about politics, nothing is permanent. It is an ongoing enterprise,” he added.

Asked to reflect on Mr. Clinton’s advice to not lose sight of the long term, Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House, said, “Certainly I don’t underestimate any opponent. I don’t overestimate them, either. We’re ready for this challenge.”