ON YOUR MARK, GET SET...

By JAMES CARNEY/WASHINGTON

Most Americans don't realize it, but the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000 begins next week. That's when the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor union and the Democrats' biggest organized constituency, gathers for its annual conference. The featured entertainment: back-to-back speeches on Feb. 18 by Vice President Gore and House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt, respectively, the heir apparent and the would-be spoiler in the coming battle to succeed Bill Clinton.

Already, tension between the White House and congressional Democrats, and Gore and Gephardt specifically, is infecting Clinton's second term. Certain to be a central topic at the labor conference is the President's offer to curb Medicare spending by $14 billion more than he proposed last winter. Gore will have to defend the larger cut, which White House aides insist was a necessary good-faith gesture toward congressional Republicans. But Gephardt can say the White House is giving away too much, too early. In his first public reaction to Clinton's new Medicare number, the Missouri Democrat said it "sounds high to me." Privately, he's telling those around him that Clinton's offer leaves Gephardt almost no bargaining room to go higher, which means any compromise between the White House and the Republicans will probably cause big defections in the ranks of House Democrats.

Hoping to calm them, White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles early last week called and apologized to both Gephardt and Senate minority leader Tom Daschle for failing to consult them on either the Medicare plan or the President's choice of Colorado Governor Roy Romer as the new party chairman. Bowles promised he would meet with them regularly from now on. But no amount of cajoling from the White House will keep Gephardt from laying more groundwork for a presidential run. Just days before the AFL-CIO conference, he plans to cross the border into Mexico to highlight, as an aide says, "the unmet promise of NAFTA," the 1993 trade agreement that Gore publicly backed and the unions, joined by Gephardt, ardently opposed. Gephardt has also hired a new deputy chief of staff, David Plouffe, who has extensive campaign experience in Iowa, site of crucial early presidential caucuses three years from now. And Gephardt is doing what all would-be presidential contenders must do these days: he's writing a book.

--By James Carney/Washington