Democratic candidates for Congress see a variety of Republican vulnerabilities but disagree on what will be a winning formula

The New York Times reports:

[S]cattershot messages reflect what officials in both parties say are vulnerabilities among Republicans on Capitol Hill, as well as President Bush's weakened political condition in this election year.

But they also reflect splits within the party about what it means to be a Democrat — and what a winning Democratic formula will be — after years in which conservative ideas have dominated the national policy debate and helped win elections.

And they complicate the basic strategy being pursued by Democratic leaders in Washington to capture control of Congress: to turn this election into a national referendum on the party in power, much the way Republicans did against Democrats in 1994.

And while Democrats have no shortage of criticism to offer, they have so far not introduced a strategy for governing along the lines of the Republican Party's Contract With America, the 1994 initiative that some Democrats hold up as their model for this year's elections.

"If you're going to run a national campaign," as the Republicans did in 1994, Dr. Jones said, "it's helpful to have a message, not just 'The other guys don't know what they are doing.' If Democrats are using that strategy, I haven't heard that message yet."

Republican leaders, while acknowledging concern about the political environment for their party, said Democrats were paying a price for being out of power and failing to propose their own program of ideas. Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said Democrats were throwing things "against the wall to see what will stick."

From the perspective of the country's mood, Democrats could hardly ask for a more hospitable environment, analysts said. There is strong discontent among voters with the way Mr. Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have led the country. Corruption investigations have implicated Republican members of Congress. There is anxiety over the war in Iraq and distress among retirees over the new Medicare prescription drug program.

But Democratic ambitions have run up against a diminished political playing field, narrowed by states' partisan redistricting efforts that have put the vast majority of Congressional seats out of play.

Of 435 House seats, just 32 are in races considered competitive, compared with 110 at this time in 1994, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. Of those, 11 are held by Democrats and 21 by Republicans.

"Congress's approval rating is a little flat. . .. " "My self-esteem wants to see it a little higher. But it is what it is. The most important thing is people love their congressman, no matter what."

Of all the differences between now and 1994, perhaps most notable is that 12 years ago, 69 seats held by Democrats were up for grabs at this stage of the election cycle, compared with 21 Republican seats today.

But Amy Walter, an analyst for the Cook Political Report, said that as many as 25 additional Republican seats could become competitive by November. In most of those districts, Ms. Walter said, Democrats have good candidates in place.

Philip A. Klinkner, an associate professor of political science at Hamilton College in New York, said conditions were historically right for the Congressional election to turn on national issues.

"You tend to see it at times when you have really unpopular presidents or really popular presidents," Dr. Klinkner said.

As they try to encourage this development, Democrats have experimented with several themes: corruption in Washington, Medicare, a Republican Congress acting as a rubber stamp for the president, governmental incompetence and what Mr. Emanuel, borrowing a phrase from his former boss at the White House, President Bill Clinton, described as a choice between "change and more of the same."

Democrats pointed out that Republicans did not offer their Contract With America until the final weeks of the 1994 campaign and said that they were planning to offer their own version by summer.