IT had been a rather difficult year for Democrats. Political analysts had dismissed them and partisans had scolded them for losing touch with "real Americans"--that elusive mainstream which doesn't need social programs, political action committees or Mike Dukakis. Real Americans, that is, just didn't need Democrats.

All of which made last Tuesday's election returns so much the sweeter. Speaking to the Boston Globe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee Ron Brown called the election results "a slam-dunk for the Democratic Party." He was referring to a series of nationwide party victories--in particular, in Virginia, New York, and New Jersey.

HOW did the Democrats do it? They should first of all thank their opponents, whose wooden personalities proved to be serious liabilities. When The New York Times ran a pre-election biography on New York Republican mayoral candidate Rudolph Giuliani, they only distanced him further from most voters.

"To relax," the Times revealed, "Mr. Giuliani sometimes drives his Cadillac Seville through the Hudson Valley, classical music filling the car."

It doesn't take a public relations consultant to understand that this is not the way to the heart of the Average Voter. What made Bush endearing to so many voters was his superficial commonness, not a confession of highbrow pursuits. Republicans should have stuck to a proven formula: pork rinds and horseshoes.

BUT a starchy GOP lineup doesn't fully explain the Democratic victories. The Democratic "trump card" was clearly the abortion-rights issue. During the campaign, which in some cases began to resemble a plebiscite on abortion rights. several Republicans backpedaled frantically from hardline anti-abortion stances. They either reversed their positions, as did Giuliani and New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Jim Courter, or minimized the issue, as did President Bush last Tuesday.

"I can tell you," Bush said to reporters, explaining the nation's priorities, "this issue (abortion rights) ranks about ninth to 14th."

Some Americans might be willing to ignore the patent absurdity of numerically ranking the nation's issues. But not many would believe Bush's contention that the debate over abortion rights, which for at least a year stood near paramount in American consciousness, suddenly dropped off the scale of national priorities on the eve of the elections.

Even as Bush dismissed the abortion rights debate as unimportant, Virginians were proving him wrong. A CBS news exit poll found that one-third of the Virginia voters considered abortion rights the foremost issue of the campaign. They proved it by electing as governor Democrat L. Douglas Wilder, a pro- choice advocate. They proved it by electing as lieutenant-governor the underdog Donald S. Beyer, Jr., an automobile salesman who ran on a pro-choice platform.

It's clear what Bush and other Republicans who have espoused right-to-life views are trying to accomplish. While the abortion funding debate worked to their favor, they gave it a prominent slot on the GOP docket. But as soon as they felt a shift in the political weather, they tried to dismiss the issue. "It's no longer important if it puts wind in their sails, not ours," they said, but the voters, especially those in Virginia, didn't buy it.

It's not that the abortion issue cuts evenly along partisan lines. Not all Democrats are pro-choice; not all Republicans are pro-life. Senator Bob Pack- wood (R--Oregon), for example, laments how his party has associated itself so strongly with anti-abortion views, leaving itself vulnerable to a shift in public opinion. "Unless our party changes its position," he told the New York Times this week, "we're going to lose more elections."

Packwood isn't alone. Earlier this week, four Republican Congresswomen, all supporters of abortion-rights, met with President Bush to discuss the issue. They emerged from the meeting with a surprise. The President, they said, no longer rules out federal financing for abortions for poor women in the case of incest and rape. What a difference twelve months makes.

Even if many Republicans are professing that abortion isn't a partisan question, the issue was their bane this fall. Several anti-abortion Republican candidates were caught unawares by the shift in public opinion, and they could only clumsily retract their former positions. Their inconsistency may have cost them the election.

POLITICAL buffs will recall how President Bush called on New York voters during the past mayoral campaign to establish a "Republican beachhead" in New York. Republicans failed in this attempt and in several other election contests. What had begun as George Bush's Republican war ended last week as Ron Brown's Democratic two-pointer.