BLOOD, SWEAT AND TEARS ... BILL CLINTON'S AND OUR OWN

All the Democrats have to face from here to California two months from now is blood, sweat and tears. The blood and sweat is Bill Clinton's. The tears are from Democrats who know that they are kicking away the marvelous opportunity to beat limping George Bush. You can't beat a limper with a guy who can't get out of the intensive care ward.

Former Vice President Walter Mondale knows this about as well as anyone. He was the pre-convention ambushed, bleeding candidate of 1984. Gary Hart stalked him around the country, and made him damaged merchandise against Ronald Reagan in November of that year. As to Clinton's current plight, Mondale says Clinton's win in New York and Wisconsin "aren't decisive enough to end this nightmare ... Brown is a battering ram, not a nominee, but he is able to make the nomination worthless. Clinton is still our likely candidate, but all we're doing is beating him up, not giving him time to rest, polish his program and raise money. Here we go again. There's got to be a lot of joy in the White House."

Yes, there is a lot of joy in the White House. George Bush, bumbling domestic politician that he is, just has to sit back and make his vacuous utterances from the Oval Office while Democrats practice intra-party demolition derby.

Clinton is soiled goods ala Chinese water torture drip by drip, drop by drop of doubt and distrust. (Agnew lives.) Go to most any state that the Democrats have to carry in November New York is the most recent case in point and half the Democrats don't trust Bill Clinton and two-thirds of them would have liked to have had another choice on the ballot.

Does anyone think that the bulk of Jerry Brown's votes come from people affirmatively attracted to his revolving door messages? Brown is "Looney tunes." Most of his voters are people sending an anti-Clinton, anti-status quo message to the boys in Washington.

Did Paul Tsongas a non-candidate run a strong second in New York because of campaign effectiveness, good looks, charm, grace, style, wit and wisdom? God no. Tsongas is a message. He runs much stronger as a message, as in New York, than as a messenger, as in Illinois and Michigan. His message is, in large part, the same as the Brown message: down with Clinton, down with Washington.

Clinton could be brought into the New York convention on a stretcher with enough delegates to be within striking range of the nomination. Politically he is near terminal, but the convention cannot take away the nomination from him even as he lies there on the stretcher even if he is voiceless and Hillary has to deliver his convention speech for him. There is about him a ghost-ridden aura of inevitable doom.

The hopes for the Democrats ride singularly with H. Ross Perot, the man who made his fortune feasting on the federal treasury and is now going to tell the country how he was so overpaid. Perot, with $100 million to spend, is the wild card of 1992. Polls show he takes more votes from Republicans than Democrats. (Under the federal election laws, a presidential candidate can spend as much of his own money as he wants, if he is willing to forego federal funds.)

Bill Clinton's future rides with Ross Perot's saddlebags full of greenbacks.