Undecidedism, cont.

Yesterday I left out my favorite argument for undecidedism. Like the positions I sketched in that last post, this one is actually an argument against voting for Obama. But also as with the others, I'm imagining the argument being entertained by people who really want to vote for the President, but who nevertheless find themselves to some degree moved by these countervailing considerations, and who therefore find themselves undecided.

This is my favorite argument, though perhaps not the best one, because it's been with me a long time, and because I encountered it in an extremely memorable setting. I heard it many years ago when I was a wee lad (more or less), while watching that dinosaur/Model T of the pre-Oprah TV talkie genre, "The Donahue Show." On the occasion I'm thinking of, Mr. Donahue interviewed a single guest over two special days: the inimitable Louis Farrakhan. 

Farrakhan was, if I remember correctly, at the height of his powers as a magnet for public controversy. This was after the 'Hitler was a great man' controversy in 1984, which he has spent the rest of his career trying to explain away (with variable success depending on the audience). It was after the Jessie Jackson campaigns, in which he played the Jeremiah Wright role. It was well before he began softening his image (to some degree) with the Million Man March in 1995 (the first time in history, a wise person said, that a people assembled to protest itself) and its reprise in 2005, and before he became ill and started to fade into the background alongside the radical black conservatism that he represents.

During the interview (in 1990, the internets tell me, so it wasn't quite as long ago as my memory wants it to be), Donahue asked Farrakhan about the impact of Reagan's presidency on black America. You can watch Farrakhan's response here (on a video of the entire interview, on sale from the Nation of Islam) and on youTube, somewhere in here (for free, though I'm not sure which one of these it is). In case, like me, you don't have time for all that right now, here's more or less what he said:

"Ronald Reagan was the best thing that could have happened to black people. With Reagan in the White House, we could be under no illusion that the government was on our side. It was quite clear, clearer than it is to some people when a Democrat is in office, that we were on our own."

That isn't exactly what he said, so please be gentle when you check the transcript. (In fact, I'm not even sure that the right interview appears on youTube - Farrakhan was on Donahue more than once….) But that's the gist. And one might reasonably think that this same view has some bearing on our evaluation of Barack Obama's presidency, specifically in relation to black interests but also more generally in relation to progressive causes.

We all know that Mr. Obama's most loyal base is the black community. We also all know that there has been a bit of unease among black folks in connection with what some regard as Mr. Obama's failure to deliver for black folks. The very expectation that he would or could 'deliver' in any large way has been roundly and plausibly debunked by many people, beginning with the President himself. But the existence of the expectation points to the phenomenon that Farrakhan had in mind. And it prepares the way for a kind of political quiescence that does not serve black folks - or anyone interested in progressive causes - well at this moment.

As left and radical commentators like Glen Ford, Jared Ball, and Joy James have argued since before the 2008 election, Mr. Obama represents an approach to politics and policy that - one can argue - works directly against the interests of the people the Democrats count as their constituents. And he gets away with it because his very presence in office makes it possible to think, 'the government really is on my side.' It is true, and not inconsequential, that he represents the kindler, gentler face of this politics, with more protections built in for more people - in particular for women, gays, and lesbians - than the Romney/GOP version(s). But, as I suggested yesterday, the different versions are at bottom quite similar, with very similar orientations to, for example, labor, education, and financialization.

If Romney were in the White House, no one interested in progressive causes would be under any illusions about the federal government being on their side. And the thought that this might be a good thing might be enough to leave one undecided.