TO STOP THE BLEEDING

Self-sabotage. We in this society believe in competition, even to the exclusion of self-interest. The bosses have wielded their money advantage to win a pyrrhic victory over their own workers, making them underbid each other for diminishing rewards. When workers have little to spend, how can they buy the goods and services that the bosses are offering?

Self-sabotage. The congressional Republicans' chosen weapons -- blind obstruction, appeals to irrational fears, and lying vilification -- would snap back on them if they were to gain the White House. A Dem opposition can play the game of no-quarter-given with as much angry joy as a Repub one can. The precedent is set: If you can't govern, you can't win the next election.

Self-sabotage. Defeatism and complacency abound. For example, Tom Hayden, that old paladin of participatory democracy, is making excuses for Mr. Obama. He says that John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. all were likewise faulted for being too moderate. Well, not quite. JFK had a Congress that was immobilized by a coalition of Repubs and Southern Dems. Bobby Kennedy was advancing, bidding to unite and organize white workers and blacks (who conservatives pitted against one another) when he was killed. Death overtook Dr. King as he was preparing to summon forth a new populism to push for peace and the abolition of poverty. They were striving to go somewhere. What Mr. Obama has done is, for the most part, to lie down.

Self-sabotage. On the Internet now are early ads for the Obama campaign, to rally the forsaken base. Featured are pictures of the president grinning dazzlingly, alive with that old flair. The contrast between the promise of '08 and the reality of '11 may be making those pictures counterproductive, I'd imagine. Most who see them must be asking, "What do you -- or we -- have to be so upbeat about?"

Self-sabotage. A recent column says that the reason no one has come forward to take on the prez for the Dem nomination is that campaigns these days are forbiddingly expensive, so that a candidate would have to enjoy backing from the pols, who are too cowardly to risk extending it. (That may be the case, but see below.)

Self-sabotage. Britain's former chancelor of the exchequer, Alistair Darling, says he regrets that he and the other Labour ministers didn't take down the hopelessly unpopular and inept Prime Minister Gordon Brown. That possibility was discussed, but they never pulled the trigger. I wondered at the time how they could stand by frozen in indecision while a reckoning at the polls came at them apace? There is something in the psychology of it, the sheer passivity, that not only shocks but mystifies. We are seeing the same thing in this country now.

Well, then --

What would NOT be self-sabotage? First, waking up. At present there are two ways to get the rightists' program for the country -- by voting for the Republicans and by voting for Mr. Obama -- and no way of getting anything else. That has to be seen for what it is.

What would NOT be self-sabotage? Someone must personify the great reversal that is urgent. In the absence of a nationwide movement, there must be a candidate who has what it takes to precipitate one. That candidate must be the anti-Obama: liberal, tough, loud, unyielding, ferociously bent on not only getting elected but putting the Repub minority permanently on the defensive and, to the fullest extent possible, driving it from public life so that the pragmatic moderate majority can again have a say. Polls repeatedly show that most Americans agree with the Dems, not the Repubs. What is required to rally the voters is a battling spirit in place of the traditional excessive caution and shrinking defensiveness.

What would NOT be self-sabotage? The recognition that the political scene has changed dramatically just lately. YouTube is the greatest instrument of democracy since the secret ballot. Overnight a believable candidate who made a combative speech would be talked about obsessively in Riyadh, Kinshasa, Moscow, Buenos Aires, Beijing, Paris, etc., with analysts asking, "What if this person caught on and won?" Here, reporters and journalists would be entranced. The funds would roll in. The volunteers would come cheering, as happened in Madison. It will be ideas, not concentrations of money, that decide the politics of the future. That is the new, more fluid reality.

What would NOT be self-sabotage? Opting for survival over fatalism. Daunting prospects await us from the environment, energy, and overpopulation, among other hazards. The one essential factor in getting atop that is the combination of local and centralized leadership. Given it, the forces of divide-and-wreck can be beaten and we can work together with intelligence and have a future.

Anyone can see that that is true. So now what we have to ask ourselves is, What is it that we want: to live as responsible citizens of a democratic society or to die sucking our thumbs?