ASHINGTON - When told at a news conference last month that he was casting a shadow over the presidential campaign, President Clinton laughed and quipped, ''I'd like to think I'm casting a little sunshine over it.''
Vice President Al Gore's clean sweep over Bill Bradley in all the states that held Democratic primaries Tuesday proved Clinton's statement to be no exaggeration.
Gore knocked out Bradley on the strength of Democratic voters who hold a favorable opinion of Clinton as a person and approved of him as president, according to exit polls.
It was only in the New England states, where many Democratic primary voters said they like Clinton's policies but disapprove of him as a person, that Bradley made it much more of a competitive race, though he failed to win a single primary.
Among such voters in New England and elsewhere Bradley trumped Gore. The former New Jersey senator's problem, however, was that there weren't enough of those voters; less than a quarter of all Democratic primary voters in any state disapprove of Clinton.
Though it is rare for a sitting vice president not to win his party's nomination, political analysts had wrongly predicted that White House fund-raising and sex scandals and Clinton's impeachment would hurt Gore among Democratic constituencies where voters may have grown tired of the president's problems.
But as New York pollster Lee Miringhoff put it yesterday, ''The words `Clinton fatigue' were not part of the vocabulary last night.''
That could change as the candidates gear up for the November election, and if George W. Bush captures the Republican nomination and tries to tap into the small pool of Democrats who dislike Clinton, analysts said.
While Bradley feared alienating Democratic voters by making the primary contest a referendum on Clinton's ethics, and by extension Gore's, Bush is unlikely to be as reticent.
''There's no question on the Republican side that George Bush wants to turn this into a referendum on Clinton. But what he wants to do is turn it on Clinton the person, not necessarily Clinton the president,'' said Norm Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
However, Charles O. Jones, an emeritus professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, said that given the public's contentment with the economy, ''I don't think that's going to be a super easy sell for Bush.''
''At some point, Al Gore can turn to George Bush and say, `George, but I am not Bill Clinton,''' Miringoff said. ''So it's an attack with limited value.''
Clinton, a self-professed political junkie, watched the election night returns with about 50 friends, former Gore staff members, and several members of the House and Senate in the White House theater. He telephoned Gore about 9:30 p.m. to offer his congratulations, obviously heartened by the bouquet the vice president tossed Clinton.
A White House aide who watched the returns with Clinton said the president was elated for Gore. Asked whether the president took some of the credit for Gore's success over Bradley among Democrats who like Clinton, the aide said: ''It wasn't about us. It was the vice president's day.''
Exit polls conducted in 11 of the states that held Democratic contests showed that Clinton's policies are far more popular than the president is as a person, but in every place except New England a clear majority like both the president and his policies. The exit polls were conducted Tuesday for the Associated Press and television networks by Voter News Service.
''That's why vice presidents win nominations'' Ornstein said. ''Unless there is some absolute disaster out there, people who vote in the president's party's primary'' almost always vote for the president's choice.
