Foxhole Folks

By GENE NICHOL

I’ve got a friend who likes to use the term “foxhole guy.” I’m pretty sure I know what he means by it. Perhaps looking past the sexism, the Urban Dictionary says it’s someone you “trust or rely on.” Someone you’d want with you “if you were taking grenades.” I’m starting to worry about whether these national Democrats are foxhole types.

Last week, when asked why he seemed more willing to protect the filibuster than voting rights, President Biden said:

“I don’t want to get wrapped up in whether this is about the filibuster, look, the American people, you can’t stop them from voting. You tried last time. More people voted than any time in American history.”

I know there’s some truth in Biden’s statement. It’s clearly the case that Republican efforts to suppress Black votes in North Carolina have stirred many thousands to soldier through long lines and purposeful barriers. This isn’t a lot of folks’ first rodeo. They’ve been lied to before. It’s no surprise when White North Carolina lawmakers try to shut the door. They’ve done it before. They’ll do it again. In fact, Republican legislators are trying to do it again right now. And Black Tar Heels won’t surrender.

But Biden’s statement also carries a worrisome, non-foxhole tenor. You may have sacrificed everything for me, he almost says, but I’m not willing to do the same for you. I can’t be expected to fight my adversaries with all I’ve got, I’ll just hope for more from my friends. The friends that I may effectively be betraying in the process.

I haven’t always been a Biden fan. But he already has made a contribution to the American experiment few could ever match – by ousting the greatest presidential threat to democratic government in our history. Still, it’s important that President Biden understands that it wasn’t his staff, or his consultants, or traditional Democratic pols and pollsters, or even the candidate himself, who delivered the victory. It was, instead, a massively engaged citizenry, of every background and status, who rose up, rebelled, and said, with unparalleled energy and inspiration: “Not on our watch, it won’t happen here, not again.”

It is also clear, beyond peradventure, that across the country the Republican party is out to disenfranchise as big a share of that uprising as possible. Hundreds of state suppression proposals are in the hopper. Dozens are already enacted. The principal goal of the Republican party is to ensure permanent, minority rule. Abraham Lincoln be damned.

The fight for our democracy is, by a very wide margin, the greatest issue we face as a people. Bar none. The notion that anyone could regard (anti-democratic) Senate prerogative, or Joe Manchin, or infrastructure, or even the economy, as in the same ballpark is baffling. Or much worse. I worry that while one side is waging war against democracy full steam, the president is saying “we’ll see, it might work out.”

There is but one pro-democracy party in the United States these days. It has to be all-in. One side or the other. Like the ancient labor and civil rights anthem. No compromise. No gentility. No hiding from the stakes. No pretending Republicans wouldn’t really do in democracy. They’ve shown who they are. Pretending otherwise is cowardice.  As Maya Angelou put it: ‘When someone shows you who they are, believe them.”

Believe them. And don’t let congressional tradition, or purported Supreme Court prerogative, or state’s rights, or a fanciful longing for civility, or an understandable desire to avoid frightening confrontation, deflect you from the battle. We need you Mr. President. Just like you needed every last one of us.

Gene Nichol is Boyd Tinsley Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law and in 2015 started the North Carolina Poverty Research Fund after the UNC Board of Governors closed the state-funded Poverty Center for publishing articles critical of the governor and General Assembly.

From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2021

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