The 12th anniversary of the Republicans' 1994 "Contract with America" came and went on Wednesday without a 2006 Democratic counterpart. And there won't be one.

Instead, Democratic House and Senate leaders held yet another press conference to denounce the Republican Congress' "rubberstamping the Bush administration's misguided agenda."

Despite repeated urging from various quarters, including from former President Bill Clinton, that the party needs to make clear what it stands for and not just against, Democrats contend that off-year elections are referenda on the party in power and that a Democratic alternative agenda would only provide targets for the GOP to attack.

Just to underscore the point, the Senate Democratic leadership's "war room" sent out an e-mail Monday declaring that "much hype surrounds the 1994 Contract with America. The Contract is often incorrectly credited with playing a large role in the Republican victory in the midterm elections. Evidence shows that this was not, in fact, the case: Candidates did not campaign on the Contract with America, and most Americans were unfamiliar with the document's existence."

Still, it's a fact that then-House Minority Leader Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., gathered 337 GOP members and candidates on the West Front of the Capitol on Sept. 27, 1994, and issued a 10-plank platform that included welfare reform, a balanced-budget constitutional amendment, tort reform, Defense budget increases, middle-class tax cuts and term limits for members of Congress.

It's undoubtedly true that the GOP won the election largely because of disgust with Democratic management -- the failure of Clinton's healthcare reform plan and Congressional scandals -- but the contract did provide a legislative roadmap for the GOP once it won a 52-seat victory and had to help govern the country.

This year, Democrats have issued a two-page positive agenda, "New Direction for America," but there's been no Capitol steps rally, and the document has all the earmarks of being just a handout designed to be an answer to the question, "But what do Democrats stand for?"

It calls for "beginning the phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq in 2006," doubling U.S. special forces "to destroy Osama Bin Laden and terrorist networks like Al Qaeda" and upgrading homeland security.

It pledges to block a Congressional pay raise until the nation's minimum wage is raised, to make college tuition tax-deductible, to foster energy independence, to force Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices and to "enact real pension reform to protect employees' financial security from CEO corruption and mismanagement."

The document says nothing about economic policy, although Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., who's in line to be chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee if the Democrats take over, said he has not ruled out the possibility of eliminating President Bush's tax cuts, which included some cuts for middle-class Americans as well as vastly more for the rich.

Separately, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) has co-written a 200-page book, "The Plan," with a former Clinton White House colleague, Bruce Reed, which does lay out a positive agenda; although it, too, is loaded with anti-Bush invective and is short on bipartisan outreach.

The book's "big ideas for America" include "universal citizen service" that calls for all Americans between 18 and 25 to spend three months learning civil defense procedures, "universal child health care" coverage and "universal retirement savings" that requires all employers to offer 401(k) plans to their workers.

The book also advances Emanuel's tax reform plan, introduced with Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., that calls for reducing the number of tax brackets from six to three, guaranteeing that all families with incomes under $100,000 pay only a 10 percent rate and taxing capital gains and dividends at the earner's income tax rate -- an increase from 15 percent to, presumably, 35 percent for high-bracket earners.

Emanuel and Wyden also want to eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax, institute a corporate flat-tax rate of 35 percent and create a base closing-style commission to eliminate corporate tax loopholes. The total package, Emanuel says, could reduce the budget deficit by $100 billion over 10 years.

Emanuel's book also calls for massive research efforts and tax credits for the purchase of hybrid cars to cut gasoline consumption in half over 10 years and reduce global warming. And it calls for tax credits to make college and/or advanced skills training affordable for all.

The book gives Bush practically no credit for any worthwhile advance, including his "No Child Left Behind" school reforms, but it does endorse, rather courageously, pay-for-performance for teachers as well as an extended school year.

You get little sense from the book that if Democrats did win control of the House or Senate, their margins would be so narrow they'd have to get GOP support to pass anything. Emanuel told me in an interview, "I believe in bipartisanship, but his administration makes it impossible. They reject all our ideas."

Emanuel is making no public predictions about the outcome in November, just saying, "I'd rather be in our situation than theirs," and disputing GOP claims that they will have a money and get-out-the-vote advantage.

Emanuel clearly thinks his party needs a positive message this year -- otherwise he would not have written the book -- but he told me that 2006 is still shaping up to be a "normal" off-year "referendum" election.

The exceptions were 1998, when the GOP was set to impeach Clinton and Democrats gained five seats, and the 2002 post-terrorism election, when the GOP picked up eight seats.

The average midterm loss for the party controlling the White House from 1974 through 1994 is nearly 26 seats. Eliminating the GOP's post-Watergate 49-seat drubbing, the average is 21. Factoring in the post-2000 Census gerrymandering of seats, Democrats would seem to be just on the edge of the 15 seats they need to take the House.

A positive message of purpose -- saying where they'd lead instead of just how much trouble they'd inflict on Bush -- could push them over the top. Maybe Democrats don't need a Contract, but they could use a plan.

Morton Kondracke is executive editor of Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.