Fixed bug #1915: Python compiles with --enable-unicode=no again. However several extension methods and modules do not work without unicode support.
diff --git a/Lib/encodings/__init__.py b/Lib/encodings/__init__.py
index 7db44cb..aea7c5e 100644
--- a/Lib/encodings/__init__.py
+++ b/Lib/encodings/__init__.py
@@ -30,6 +30,7 @@
 
 import codecs
 from encodings import aliases
+import __builtin__
 
 _cache = {}
 _unknown = '--unknown--'
@@ -60,7 +61,7 @@
     """
     # Make sure we have an 8-bit string, because .translate() works
     # differently for Unicode strings.
-    if isinstance(encoding, unicode):
+    if hasattr(__builtin__, "unicode") and isinstance(encoding, unicode):
         # Note that .encode('latin-1') does *not* use the codec
         # registry, so this call doesn't recurse. (See unicodeobject.c
         # PyUnicode_AsEncodedString() for details)
diff --git a/Lib/optparse.py b/Lib/optparse.py
index 62d2f7e..4fbe094 100644
--- a/Lib/optparse.py
+++ b/Lib/optparse.py
@@ -824,7 +824,11 @@
     (True, False) = (1, 0)
 
 def isbasestring(x):
-    return isinstance(x, types.StringType) or isinstance(x, types.UnicodeType)
+    try:
+        return isinstance(x, basestring)
+    except:
+        return isinstance(x, types.StringType) or isinstance(x, types.UnicodeType)
+
 
 class Values: