In a political era where many Democrats feel disheartened, shell-shocked, and numb to the parade of dictatorial edicts handed down by Trump during his second term, commentator and constitutional scholar Gene Nichol asks a question we’ve all dwelled on: “Now what?”
His answer is simple, but not easy: We fight.
For people like me, who grew up imagining they would inherit a bright liberal future replete with equal rights and politicians willing to dramatically improve education, give people a way out of poverty, and repair the damage of climate change, this is perhaps not the answer we want to hear. But, as Nichol, a longtime North Carolinian, incisively points out in his examination of the state’s cyclical history of progress and pushback, it is the only answer there is.
In a Southern state with a long history of racial violence, it’s past time to accept that we’re not always the “beacon of progress” we wish to be, Nichol argues. But there’s still a place for optimism, even if it’s now a rare commodity, he writes on the same page. As much as North Carolina is a state of regressive conservatism, it’s also a state with a rich legacy of protest, with “North Carolina progressives carry[ing] an ever-ready willingness to fight for their state’s future,” Nichol writes.
Nichol finds hope in our election of Democrats in the 2024 statewide races, “where ruthlessly gerrymandered political districts could hold no sway.” He finds hope in the widespread protests that erupted when Judge Jefferson Griffin attempted to steal a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court. And he, somewhat counterintuitively, finds hope in the fact that Republicans have had to obfuscate their true motives in order to lower taxes for the wealthy, take funding from public schools, and target civil rights.
As in his previous book, 2023’s Lessons from North Carolina, Nichol takes advantage of his deep knowledge of state politics to pull back the curtain on Republican machinations, pointing to clear evidence that GOP leaders have waged an “enthusiastic” and “relentless” “war on democratic processes” since 2010. Even the most politically knowledgeable and engaged reader will learn something surprising and important about what the North Carolina General Assembly has been up to in the last 25 years.
Nichol is not afraid to use strong language—calling Phil Berger, Tim Moore, Jefferson Griffin, and the Republican contingent of the NC Supreme Court crooks, liars, and thieves—while making a convincing case that brutal honesty is what’s needed among Democrats if they want to mobilize voters.
The state’s “more mannerly anti-democratic crusade” is in direct contrast to Trump’s blatant attacks on democracy, Nichol writes. But in 2025, he argues, the GOP has “gone public”, and it’s time we do the same—stop pretending we’re on an equal playing field, stop pretending it’s just politics as usual, and stop pretending we don’t have an obligation to fight for democratic values.
Nichol presents a suite of ambitious state constitutional amendments he argues Democrats should aggressively back—similar to some enacted in other states—the most important of which is an amendment to create an independent redistricting commission. With Democratic victories in the 2026 and 2028 elections, he argues, a referendum that puts power back in the hands of the people is possible. Grassroots action is key.
“The last fifteen years have shown that victories won’t always readily come. Sometimes, we’ll lose—and lose again,” Nichol writes. “We’ll discover that part of our charge, often the most essential part, is that we not lose heart. Getting up off the mat can be the engaged citizen’s greatest attribute.”
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