I’ll still ambivalent whether this is a case of better late than never or too little too late. At any rate, many liberals are starting feel disappointed the one who was to be their savior. Whether this disillusionment will lead to anything constructive seems doubtful, but that is not what I’m interested in here. What concerns me is the implication that Obama has shifted to the right. The fallacy in this suggestion is not, of course, that he has taken a reactionary position on virtually every issue he has hitherto taken a position on, that this is true is obvious enough. But that he somehow has espousing a leftist or at least liberal position before the election. In fact, as far as possible, he did everything in his power during the primaries to evade admitting his position. That is, it is not true that he has shifted right as this implies a definite starting position. But at best he expressed no position and expresses a reactionary position. Logically, based on available evidence, he either was previously agnostic or was a reactionary all along. If he had, or has, a closed progressive agenda, this fact is irrelevant—this agenda takes no meaningful concrete form, even verbally.
I suppose what’s troubling is that a large number of people believe in what was never there—there never was a progressive Obama. At least not as a presidential candidate. Of his previous record I can’t say, but the fact he is a politician is good reason for suspicion.
What do we have in store following his election? Continuation of imperial violence,—including, a recent promise of his,* more violence in Lebanon—public subsidization of the insurance industry bosses, destruction of labor unions, new and improved methods of of keeping the public acquiescent (so far quite successful),…in short we can expect to get exactly what we’ve been getting all along. The argument that he is the lesser of two evils, even granting this is true, missed the point. It is true, a slave owner who gives six lashing in stead of the alternative seven is the lesser of two evils but the issue is that slavery is a crime and an abomination that needs to be abolished. Of course in the mean time we should, and will, choose the lesser of two evils.
Incidentally, the function of the lesser of two evils argument, in most practical cases, is to prevent a statement of principle being make. It is an evasive strategy; a method to stop an remark it “wouldn’t do to say” form being uttered in polite company.
*Cf. http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn07062008.html