LOS ANGELES--The Republican Revolution may be nearly dead here in California, but help is on the way--from the Democrats. Eschewing Clintonian "triangulation," California Democrats are taking a far-left turn that could save the GOP from a statewide landslide defeat.

Traditional liberals, New Democrats and "yellow-dog Democrats" have given way to a new political breed--call it the Mad Dog Democrat. What excites the Mad Dogs is not the prospect of electoral victory but the opportunity to wage warfare over race, sex and class resentments.

California Democrats' new militancy was on display at this spring's Fight the Right rally in San Francisco. Inspired largely by opposition to a ballot measure to end racial preferences in state government, the rally brought together dignitaries like Mayor Willie Brown of San Francisco with a motley potpourri of leftist interest groups: the National Organization of Women, the ultramilitant AIDS group ACT-UP, the Socialist Workers Party, the National Lawyers Guild and trade unions, including the powerful Service Employees International Union.

The antipreference measure, known as the California Civil Rights Initiative, was the Fight the Right focal point. But many of the Democrats in attendance also had signed on to a series of left-wing ballot measures seeking, among other things, to raise the minimum wage, reimpose income tax surcharges on "the rich," make it easier for shareholders to sue corporations and tighten regulation of health maintenance organizations.

The Mad Dogs' extremism will be on prominent display through Election Day. Militants plan to strut their stuff outside next month's Republican National Convention in San Diego and throughout the fall campaign. And activist students are organizing what they call Freedom Summer '96, a campaign to turn California voters against the now-popular CCRI.

Many centrist Democrats find the unleashing of these radicals alarming. "There's nothing like the sweet smell of success for the party to revert to self-destructive patterns," says Morley Winograd, a founder of the California Democratic Leadership Council. "They see a Democratic resurgence, but they don't realize people don't want to embrace class and race warfare politics."

What most disturbs moderate Democrats is the party's decision to turn the anti-CCRI effort into a vicious jihad. Bob Mulholland, a longtime key strategist for the state party, has promised to wage a dirty-tricks campaign against Glenn Custred and Tom Wood, the professors who authored the initiative. "These two professors may have white shirts on now, but by the time we're done with them they'll be pretty dirtied up," Mr. Mulholland told the San Jose Mercury News. He said he plans to investigate the professors' taxes, their legal histories and any possible indiscretions with students.

The battle against CCRI has flushed out the worst in other top Democratic politicians. Some don't even pretend to cloak their tribalist proclivities. "We don't want a color-blind society," acknowledges state Sen. Diane Watson. City Councilman Richard Alarcon of Los Angeles likens CCRI--whose wording is based on the 1964 Civil Rights Act--to Hitler's "Mein Kampf."

Even San Francisco's normally savvy Mayor Brown seems to have come unhinged. Mr. Brown claims that a vote for CCRI "won't be on the basis of anything except pure, unadulterated exploitation of racism." Never mind that the initiative's leading spokesman, University of California Regent Ward Connerly, is black. Mr. Brown scoffs at the idea that whites might be put off by a regime that institutionalizes discrimination at taxpayer-supported institutions. The mayor even told Mr. Custred, " I don't care about your idiot kids."

Any Democrat who has the temerity even to consider supporting CCRI faces a kind of exclusion that would make pro-choice Republicans feel at home at Pat Buchanan rally. Even the usually moderate Sen. Dianne Feinstein--whose late campaign chairman, Duane Garrett, backed the measure--has timidly followed the party line.

The ascendancy of the Mad Dogs has left middle-of-the-road Democrats politically homeless. "When I go to the party convention and I see these activists, I feel like I'm from another planet," says Charles Sena, former chief fund-raiser for Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, a leading moderate. At the recent state party convention in Los Angeles, for example, the high point came when California Labor Federation chief John Henning thunderously denounced GOP Gov. Pete Wilson's policies as representing "the chain gang philosophy of the Old South." Equating diverse California with apartheid South Africa or pre-1965 Alabama is a favorite Mad Dog theme, notwithstanding the Golden State's large and upwardly mobile minority population.

"The party is falling into a trap when it follows these left-wing types," Mr. Sena argues. He and other party insiders point out that the party's opposition to CCRI could alienate even key supporters--particularly Jews and Asians, most of whom are widely expected to support the measure. They also worry that the militantly anticorporate tone of the campaign for left-wing ballot measures will alienate affluent suburban swing voters.

The party may be falling into the same trap that turned the 1994 gubernatorial race away from heavily favored challenger Kathleen Brown and toward the unpopular Gov. Wilson. The Brown campaign, which started in the political center, became hostage to powerful left-leaning interests, particularly the Service Employees, and to tribalist politicos.

"I guess they're getting their signals from the office of Gov. Kathleen Brown," quips Hal Plotkin, a former state Senate candidate from the Silicon Valley. Although Mr. Plotkin is one of the very few Democrats publicly backing CCRI, he says that "with the exception of the Stalinist hierarchy of the party, most Democrats I meet here are for the measure."

Beyond CCRI, Mr. Plotkin and other political veterans also fear the party's increasing embrace of class-warfare politics in a state with a burgeoning entrepreneurial economy. The DLC's Mr. Winograd, a former chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, worries that like the old liberals of his former state, who backed such unpopular measures as busing and higher taxes, California Democrats are increasingly out of touch with the emerging realities of the Golden State.

Mr. Winograd, co-author of "Taking Control: Politics in the Information Age" (Henry Holt, 1996), says the party's leftward lurch will be its undoing in a state where the self-employed outnumber union members. Although many of these affluent voters may sympathize with Democratic positions on education and the environment, few will support a party committed to keeping taxes high and redistributing wealth to public-sector workers and their allies.

"These left politics of the party are absolutely at odds with the new economy driving California," Mr. Winograd says. "These are 1930s and 1960s messages middle-class Californians are unlikely to want to listen to. It's turning a potential Democratic triumph into a potential disaster."

Joel Kotkin is a senior fellow with the Pepperdine Institute for Public Policy and the Pacific Research Institute.