The American Congress is now, and has always been, crippled by the power of big money and brutally antidemocratic traditions, including the existence of a Senate that gives tiny rural states power equal to big urban ones. But big reforms have happened all the same—though not without conflict, backsliding, difficulty, and even violence. Still, working-class people and women have the vote, African Americans have civil rights, speech is more or less free—the “mere” reformist project has worked, again and again.
