America said it was ready for change — until a Black man was put in charge

After the Great Depression and World War II, a consensus was born in which most people most of the time believed federal law and the federal government should serve everyone and treat everyone equally.

That they did not actually do that was the political basis for the rights movements that emerged in the decades after the war. Until the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, it wasn’t really possible to say liberalism and democracy were the same thing. Afterward, it was. And every rights movement since that era seemed to affix the idea of political progress, as if history always marched toward it.

But this consensus had the makings of its own undoing. Basically, the forces of white power conceded, saying: OK, women and Black people (and other outpeople) can have equal rights and equal protection, but they can’t really be in charge of anything. They can’t really have authority, especially not over those of us who are “real Americans.” Then came Barack Obama’s election. The whole thing came down.

Samantha Hancox-Li has a different read on history, with different years of the origins of this bargain, what she calls a “constitutional settlement.” In a recent essay for Liberal Currents, for which she is an editor and podcast host, she pegs the present crisis to the end of “the long 1990s,” or the consensus that held between 1982 and 2024. But her point remains – that the biggest question in American politics, the one that animates everything, has always been who belongs and who doesn’t. Her conclusion? “There is America enough for everyone.”

JS: Sometimes I feel like the Democratic Party is still in the 1990s. James Carville, "moderation," the economy before “cultural issues.” You wrote about that recently. What’s the elevator version of your thinking?

SHI: Mainstream Democrats have been sleepwalking for a long time now, imagining that they can just fiddle around the edges of the existing political-economic order and that will be enough.

It is obviously not enough. The cost of living crisis – the housing crisis – is biting harder and harder, and hardest of all in blue states. This is no accident. The economic policies Democrats are offering to the American people do not work. We need to offer a future in which there is enough for everyone – and that means getting rid of our insane process obsessions that prevent people from building green energy and new factories and housing most of all.

JS: The successes of the 1990s are not the failures of the 2020s?

SHI: As I wrote in "The Present Crisis and the End of the Long 90s," the constitutional settlement of the long 1990s (1982-2024) included economic, cultural and political components. The economic component was managed inflation and slow growth, palliated by asset inflation (especially home-equity inflation). This was a clear improvement over the stagflation that preceded it, but an inherently unsustainable bargain. We need to return to an economy driven by wage growth – and which builds enough stuff to alleviate the potential for inflation.

The cultural settlement was a kind of racial and sexual hypocrisy. Outright racism and sexism was out, but at the same time, America remained a de facto white man's republic. After the bruising unrest – and occasional extreme violence – of the 1960s and 1970s, this seemed like a good bargain to both sides. But it was likewise inherently unsustainable. The children of that era grew up believing we could be anything we wanted. And when we crashed into the hard barriers that remained, it felt like a betrayal. Meanwhile, the old guard was shocked and appalled that we wanted to rise above our station – Barack Obama, Black Lives Matter, MeToo – these were shocks to their system.

To reforge a new order means delivering on the promise of America. There is America enough for everyone, and anyone who wants to be can become an American – endowed with the same fundamental equality we all possess. This means, among other things, finally resolving the long-stewing border crisis – in favor of radically increased immigration and a clear, simple pathway to citizenship.

JS: You suggest Bidenomics went far, but not far enough. Explain.

SHI: Bidenomics overturned the 1990s consensus in two interrelated ways. First, Biden returned to explicit industrial policy. He promoted massive public investment in specific sectors – computer chips, green energy, batteries – largely due to geopolitical competition from China.

Second, Biden embraced "hot" macroeconomic policy, both from industrial policy and covid-era direct stimulus. This led to dramatic real wage growth, especially among the working class, as well as very strong GDP growth – far stronger than any comparable industrialized country.

The problem is that Biden stimulated the economy without alleviating the artificial scarcity of fundamental goods like housing, health care and education. The resulting inflationary pressures were strongly disliked by many people. Even as real wages increased and consumer goods became ever more available, a safe and secure life seemed out of reach.

The epitome of this problem is a flat-screen TV in the tent of a homeless person – or a brand-new Lexus parked in front of a hundred-year-old tenement in Jersey City that retails for a million dollars. Luxuries have become cheap, even as essentials have grown astoundingly expensive.

What is needed is a policy that can marry a hot economy, high growth, and abundance of fundamental goods for everyone. We don't just want cheap TVs – we want cheap housing, cheap health care, cheap education.

JS: Trump is the backlash against the compromise of the Long 90s falling apart. Are we seeing a backlash to the backlash or is it all vibes now?

SHI: I think that no one has yet been able to put together a political package that can unite the American people around a new constitutional settlement. The landslide victories and political consolidations of FDR and Reagan remain out of reach. Trump is a borderline senile old man, surrounded by scheming courtiers who fight with each other constantly. There is no coherent economic agenda coming from Trump II. Their political projects are based on delusional and conspiratorial thinking. Elon Musk, for instance, appears to sincerely believe the "woke mind virus" is a Marxist conspiracy pushed by a cabal of university professors called "the Cathedral." There is no prospect here of putting together a new consensus.

At the same time, the Democratic Party seems adrift. We are still barnacled over by delusional NIMBYs who are convinced they are rebels against the system, instead of recognizing that they have been putting their preferred policies into place for 40 years – and delivering us into the mess we're in today. We need to clean up our own house, ditch the wreckers and the fools and the NIMBYs, if we are to consolidate the American people around a new program.

JS: A new consensus would probably come out of the immigration debate. Right now, the Democrats are too interested in conceding to Republican bad faith -- "open borders" -- instead of forging their own path.

SHI: For years, Democrats have been running away from the immigration question. Polling says that immigration is their weak point, so they avoid talking about it – which only furthers that appearance of weakness. And the American people notice.

Just like they've noticed these past few weeks when a few brave Democrats, like Senator Chris Van Hollen, made a point of confronting Trump's stupid and lawless and unconstitutional immigration policies, and Trump's poll numbers have dropped like a rock.

Because this is the thing. The border is not a sideshow. The border cannot be a sideshow. The question of immigration is fundamental, because it bears on that fundamental question: what does it mean to be an American? Who gets to be American? Is this a white man's republic – or is America for everyone? Does the Constitution guarantee freedom and due process for all Americans – or do we rip our rights up whenever we get close to the border? We cannot move forward without answering these questions. I would prefer we answer them simply: there is America enough for everyone.