Yesterday, Barack Obama eulogized John Lewis as the champion of voting rights, while Donald Trump sought to annul the 2020 election. Whiplash doesn’t begin to describe the experience of viewing Obama extolling the hero of the Voting Rights Act that has been shredded by Trump and the Republican courts.
Our only African American president has not been much in evidence during the Trump years. Watching him again, one was reminded of his intellect, his commitment to enlarged democracy, his wit, and his decency.
Among recent presidents, Obama is unmatched, as incorruptible, an
exemplary family man, and an idealist calling America to be its best. Obama is a literal testament to the optimism of John Lewis’s life’s work, now being destroyed by Trump.
Obama and Lewis are also reminders of the sheer dignity and daily persistence of America’s African American citizens, in the face of behaviors that ought to shame their oppressors. How on earth could this republic have possibly gone, directly no less, from Obama to Trump?
I think the reason is less unrelenting racism (though there is plenty of that) than corrupted capitalism. After all, America did elect Barack Obama president, twice.
But for four decades, our system has beaten down working people of all races. And that set the stage once again for the scapegoating of African Americans. If we want to resume the trajectory of steady
improvement that Obama invoked and that Lewis lived and nearly died for, enlightened racial consciousness is surely necessary—but not enough.
We will need an economic system of greater solidarity among working people of all races and less domination by corrupt capitalists in league with corrupt politicians. Obama was exemplary in so many ways, and personally unblemished. But his failure to clean up capitalism helped seed the ground for a successor determined to expunge his many other good works.
Assuming a tolerably free election—far from a given—Joe Biden will face the heavy responsibility of redeeming racial justice, democracy, and a decent economy. All three are required, or he will fail.
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