he feeling is as definite as the growing autumn chill: Bill Bradley has crossed the mysterious line that separates long shots from formidable contenders.
The political alchemy transforming him from distant prospect to hot property has been so sudden that even the former US senator from New Jersey seems surprised at the growing sense he can beat Vice President Al Gore for the Democratic presidential nomination.
''When people feel that way, that shows we're making progress,'' Bradley said cautiously last week. ''But it's only a snapshot in time. We're up against real establishment power.''
That establishment power, in the form of Gore and the institutional loyalties and resources he can command, is what makes the snapshot all the more remarkable.
Yes, Gore still leads his only rival nationwide. But whereas several months ago Bradley seemed to be laboring against almost impossible odds, now there's a realistic route to victory.
In civic-minded Iowa, he's poised to do well. In independent New Hampshire, whose primary is a proven campaign catapult, there's increasing talk - supported by polls - that Bradley may well win.
In New York, whose contest will prove the East Coast anchor of the March 7 round of primaries, he's erased a large deficit to pull essentially even. Not only did retiring New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, king of the political cognitariat, endorse Bradley last week, he declared Gore unelectable.
What should Gore be thinking?
''I would be very worried because I am vice president and because there is a [Clinton] fatigue factor and everybody knows it,'' answers Mario Cuomo, former governor of New York, whose son Andrew, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, is a Goreally.
As worrisome for Gore is that Bradley continues to fare significantly better in national polls against Republican front-runner George W. Bush.
''If Gore were 15 points ahead of Bush instead of 15 points behind, we wouldn't be talking about Bill Bradley today,'' says pollster Geoffrey Garin, president of Peter Hart Research Associates, which polls for a third of the 45 Democrats in the US Senate. ''The continuing opportunity for Bradley is nervousness about whether Gore is a winner.''
Conversely, with Bradley now seen as increasingly plausible, the endorsements are rolling in. Consider his lineup last week in New Hampshire.
A former Granite State senator, John Durkin, stood with him on Tuesday; on Wednesday, Portsmouth's former mayor Eileen Foley signed aboard, as did 17 Strafford County political figures. In a sign of the growing concern at Gore central, an aide from his camp started showing up at Bradley events, passing out lists of Gore endorsers to deflate his rival's announcements.
Why has Bradley gained so much ground?
One reason is that Clinton fatigue has thrown Gore's legitimate accomplishments into the shadows.
''People don't see Al Gore the vice president and all he did in foreign affairs and all the help he was to the president intellectually,'' says Cuomo. Instead, Cuomo says, the public thinks: ''He is not a bad guy, he is not going to mess around with interns, but he stood there while the other guy was messing around with interns.''
Cut to a Bradley event Tuesday in Manchester.
''I think Bradley could make mincemeat of Bush, and I don't think Gore could,'' Mary Sayer, a Concord independent, says. ''Gore stood right with Clinton. He is not Clinton, but he backed Clinton.''
That's a sentiment voiced over and over in New Hampshire: Gore is simply too Clinton-scarred to win, whereas Bradley presents a fresher, cleaner face for next November.
Still, the surprising turn of events is more than a simple matter of Gore playing the picture to Clinton's Dorian Gray.
Some candidates are born to opportunity, some create opportunity, still others have opportunity thrust upon them. With Bradley, it's been all three.
For most voters this is still a campaign of atmospherics, but impressions of Bradley, a well-known name since his days as a Princeton basketball star, are strongly favorable. Ask why people like him, and the responses are very similar to what voters said about Paul Tsongas in 1992, when the late former US senator ran for the Democratic nomination.
Despite Bradley's 18 years in the Senate, people don't see Bradley as a typical politician. Instead, they think he is decent, honest, and sincere, mature, independent, and thoughtful. And gutsy. In short, at a time when the long-running Clinton follies have triggered a backlash against all things slick and slippery, voters find Bradley authentic. That's made at least a temporary virtue of a style so low-key it is sometimes soporific.
Meanwhile, his willingness to take more liberal positions than Gore on guns and campaign finance, as well as his rejection of political action committee, or PAC, money, have made favorable impressions on informed activists. (Bradley plans to increase that profile in upcoming weeks with speeches laying out proposals to expand health care and fight poverty.)
Many of those voters would have been with Bradley regardless of his poll standing. But he's also starting to benefit from pragmatists willing to consider him because he's now viable.
''He has made a lot of ground in a short time,'' said Peter Mantos, 52, a Dover independent who came to hear Bradley at a Portsmouth labor hall and left sold on the candidate. ''A few months ago, I wouldn't have thought he would be doing as well.''
Add Gore's negatives and Bradley's positives, and you've got the dynamic that has left political observers saying the man who was widely dismissed six months ago as a dull, ethereal policy wonk who could barely hold onto his own Senate seat in 1990 could actually wrest the nomination from Gore.
''There hasn't been a sitting vice president to lose his party's nomination in this century, but Bradley has done a great job of raising money and positioning himself,'' says US Representative Martin Meehan of Massachusetts, who leans toward Gore. ''He has a shot to win.''
To examine just how that might happen requires a bit of insider handicapping that goes like this:
Bradley would need to start with a solid second in the late January Iowa caucuses. From there, he'd need a victory in New Hampshire on Feb. 8.
That would allow Bradley to surf into March on the newsweekly covers, the talk of the nation. Eleven states are currently slated to hold primaries on March 7, but two will dominate the headlines: New York and California.
Should he lose both, Bradley would be ready for last rites.
But should he win both, ''Dollar Bill'' suddenly becomes the decided favorite.
If the two split the big prizes, outcomes in the other March 7 races become important. With a New Hampshire win under his belt, Bradley would be well-positioned to sweep the five other New England states plus Ohio, leaving Gore with an advantage in Georgia and Missouri. Call Maryland a tossup.
From there, the campaign heads south, where, in past races, wounded front-runners like Walter Mondale and George Bush have been able to regroup and recover.
In that event, despite widespread predictions of a truncated race decided by mid-March, the course may well be set for a campaign that goes to the last primary.
But go back to New York and California, the two cornerstone states of March 7. How do they look four months out? Well, a Bradley win in New Hampshire would create momentum that would probably carry him to a New York victory.
That means Gore would have to prevail in California, where he enjoys strong support from Governor Gray Davis and much of the Democratic establishment.
Would California stay with a shaky vice president rocked by a New Hampshire defeat? No one knows, nor is recent history particularly instructive, since the nomination has usually been all but decided by the time the Golden State, which in the past has voted in June, goes to the polls.
But in 1984, when then US Senator Gary Hart's up-from-nowhere challenge revealed the tepidness of Mondale's support, California opted for the challenger, not the favorite.
California political consultant Bill Carrick, a veteran of several national campaigns, says Gore remains strong now with state Democrats, but Bradley clearly has opportunities to grow.
Carrick's bottom line: ''I think you have to look at it and say California is a pretty trendy state, and if there is a lot of momentum and free media coverage about Bradley being this insurgent giant killer, that would scare me if I was Gore.''
