The recall mounted against Gov. Gray Davis was going nowhere until Congressman Darrell Issa made a multimillion-dollar commitment to the signature-gathering drive and said he would run to succeed Davis, but even then, the two-term governor and his advisers thought they could survive by pursuing their battle-tested campaign tactics.

They would, as they had often done in the past, demonize their opponent -- Issa -- and thus frame the choice as one between Davis, the devil they knew, and a more evil alternative. Accordingly, the Davis trash-talking machine was cranked up. Details about Issa's youth, including allegations of brushes with the law, were publicized either through Davis surrogates or cooperative journalists.

The tactics worked -- too well. Issa dropped out of the running when it became clear that his candidacy to succeed Davis was doomed. But by then, it didn't matter because the recall had caught fire, and Republican movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante had jumped into the race. Issa's withdrawal destroyed the Davis survival plan. He was no longer running against someone else; suddenly, he was running, in effect, against himself -- trying to overcome the managerial and leadership errors that had lowered his approval to barely 1 in 5 voters.

The pro-Davis, anti-recall campaign has tried to portray the situation as a right-wing conspiracy directed out of the White House, but that approach hasn't done much either, given the substantial number of Democrats who have expressed support for dumping the governor.

The most recent tactic pursued by Davis, reportedly on the advice of former President Clinton, has been to quasi-apologize for his errors, present himself in more human terms and promise to pay more attention to Californians' concerns if they'll keep him in office.

Davis launched the revised campaign with a poorly received address at UCLA two weeks ago and has slowly escalated his level of contrition.

"I know many Californians are angry," Davis acknowledged during a Labor Day rally in downtown Los Angeles, describing the recall as "a humbling experience (that) I would not wish on my worst enemy." Later, he pledged to conduct a series of "town hall meetings," insisting -- notwithstanding his 30-year record of insider politics -- "I'd rather listen to real people than just listen to advocates or their representatives."

Davis' contrition campaign continued this week during an odd "debate" in Walnut Creek in which he faced questioners alone on whether he should be dumped. However, Davis was still reluctant to do a complete mea culpa. At one point, he acknowledged that "I was slow to act on the energy crisis," but rather than specify how he stumbled on the issue that first drove his approval ratings downward, he launched into a factually questionable defense of his actions on energy and insisted that "that is the kind of experience that you need."

It's too soon to tell whether the I-feel-your-anger tactic is having any effect on the millions of Californians who will decide Davis' political fate Oct. 7, but it's evident from public and private polling data that he faces a very uphill struggle.

Not only do polls continue to show the recall winning by double-digit margins, but also that there are very few would-be undecided voters. And that means Davis, to prevail, would have to persuade hundreds of thousands of Californians to switch from pro-to anti-recall stances. The new anti-recall television ads featuring Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California's most popular major politician, is another effort at turning around the numbers.

As Davis and his advisers search for a tactical approach that can work, with the election scarcely a month away, he's in peril of becoming irrelevant. If the news media and the major interest groups with stakes in the outcome -- such as labor unions -- decide that Davis is a goner and shift all of their attention to whether Schwarzenegger or Bustamante will succeed him, it will become a self-fulfilling situation. Nobody will be paying any attention to Davis' promises to do better.

The next round of public polling, which should be happening soon, will fix his position and thus be critical to Davis' hopes of survival.