A group of centrist Democrats who helped elect Bill Clinton to the White House warned on Monday that the Democratic Party will lose the 2004 presidential election unless it can win over suburban voters who feel the party has become too liberal.

In language critical of left-leaning positions, the Democratic Leadership Council urged party leaders to avoid policies that voters may associate with big government and special-interest groups, including labor unions.

"The Democratic Party is at risk of being taken over from the far left," U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, the group's chairman, told reporters at a two-day DLC convention here.

"If we want to govern, we have to offer the American people more than just nostalgia and more than just criticism."

The council released the results of a survey by former Clinton pollster Mark Penn that showed President Bush as vulnerable on domestic issues including the economy, health care, the federal deficit and education.

But the poll of 1,225 "likely 2004 voters" conducted June 20 to July 1 also said Democrats faced a huge challenge attracting voters from suburban families -- clear majorities of whom were seen to criticize the party as too liberal, beholden to special interests and out of touch with mainstream America.

"The poll is very clear for those who think that if the Democratic Party just lurched to the left and showed a higher flash of anger, that they would somehow win the next election," Penn said. "This poll puts a laugh to that theory."

The DLC has tried for years to push the party away from the liberal agendas of past nominees such as George McGovern in 1972, Walter Mondale in 1984 and Michael Dukakis in 1988.



In 2000, it criticized former Vice President Al Gore's unsuccessful campaign for being too populist and abandoning some of the pro-business themes that helped elect Clinton.

In May, the group trained its sights on former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, criticizing the White House hopeful for his anti-war rhetoric and other positions it castigated as self-interested liberalism.

"Democrats are only going to win in 2004 if we make very clear to the American people that we're tough on national security, that we're tough on economic growth and that we have a better alternative for the country," said DLC President Bruce Reed, the former Clinton domestic policy advisor.