Immigration polling is complicated, but one kernel of public opinion that shines through in nearly every survey is that Americans support a pathway to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants. This position has held throughout the decades in which our political system has failed to address the immigration issue. Despite the staying power of American compassion, the Senate parliamentarian recently adjudged that Democrats may not include a pathway to citizenship in their reconciliation bill. Whether the bill can pass at all is anything but clear.

Every legislative body has rules, but the parliamentarian’s verdict against immigration reform is particularly galling given the nature of the U.S. Senate. The Senate was constructed over the first century of the Republic to maintain the slave states’ power in the face of northern population growth. To this day the body’s main function is to stymie egalitarian social reform. And it remains extraordinarily unrepresentative: the 50 Democrats represent 40 million more voters than the 50 Republicans. Speaking of the number 40 million, that’s the population of California, which has as many Senators as Wyoming, population 600,000.

The Senate is only the most visible manifestation of a trend that has come to define our nation’s politics. America is a center-left nation. The fact that Democrats have won every presidential election but one in the three decades since 1992 attests to our progressive character. But by virtue of undemocratic institutions, the conservative minority in the country increasingly gets to effect its policy preferences in the face of a consensus that is contrary to their nationalistic, regressive doctrines. Red America is holding Blue America hostage.

Consider the courts. Neil Gorsuch was the first Supreme Court Justice ever appointed to the high court by a president who lost the popular vote. Not only does Gorsuch hold a seat that was purloined from Barack Obama–the first Black president–he owes his position to an individual whom Americans rejected at the polls by nearly 3 million votes. Two more Justices ascended to the Court thanks to this popular vote loser, with Justice Barrett being rushed through in flagrant contravention to the “rule” that Mitch McConnell fabricated in order to steal a seat for Gorsuch. The Supreme Court, populated by justices of dubious legitimacy, is now set to eviscerate American women’s right to have an abortion.

The immense power of the Supreme Court makes it the most significant example of minority rule in this country. But down at the state level, minoritarian governance is even more explicit. In Wisconsin, Democrats won the popular vote for state legislature by 10% in 2020 but hold only a third of the seats. The Badger state holds the dubious honor of having even more rigged elections than North Carolina, which has for a decade been the poster child for democratic decline. If Wisconsin’s GOP supermajority passes a bill on the lines of Texas’s effort to ban abortion, Wisconsin women will have lost part of their bodily autonomy to legislators who should not even be in the majority.

Across the board, America’s conservative minority is imposing its will on a majority that leans progressive. Seven out of the last eight times we went to vote for President, we have expressed our wishes for center-left governance. Public opinion polling shows that support for the progressive agenda is even stronger than presidential results would indicate. Yet we are still mired in a Reagan-era paradigm of dog-eat-dog capitalism and rule by the few over the many. The calling of this generation is to take for the majority was has been arrogated by the minority. That will not be an easy task.