Having devoted most of my adult life to reporting on, campaigning against, and exposing the corrosive influence of money in politics, I’m gratified that this cause was – finally – front of mind in a national election.

That’s right: in the midterms, corruption topped the list of Americans’ concerns, and candidates won by waging campaigns promising to reject corporate Pac money and linking Washington’s pay-to-play culture to the affordability crisis.

Looking ahead to 2028, the Democratic Georgia senator Jon Ossoff is now generating presidential buzz, dripping out clips of his speeches deriding a “coin-operated” government and slamming Citizens United – a ruling he rightly calls “the most destructive supreme court decision in modern American history”.

But as righteous and expansive as Democrats’ anti-corruption jeremiads have been amid billions spent to try to buy the midterm elections, the rhetoric so far has been accompanied by shockingly small proposals for mere nibble-at-the-edges reforms.

Ossoff would have you believe a real anti-corruption agenda is pushing to overturn Citizens United, a congressional stock trading ban and prohibiting traditional corporate political action committees.

Ahead of his likely 2028 presidential campaign, the former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel argues the answer to endemic corruption is banning government officials from betting in prediction markets, forcing them to put assets in blind trusts, and prohibiting them from accepting foreign gifts.

Emblematic of most challenger candidates this election cycle, the Democratic Kansas senator-elect Adam Hamilton vaguely insisted to the American Prospect: “What I’d like to do is figure out how we help get money out of politics instead of having it dictating politics” – but he offered only Emanuel’s prescriptions, plus a ban on lobbying by retired members of Congress.

All of those are laudable ideas, but they are the equivalent of pruning a few saplings of corruption – they hardly constitute an agenda that rips up the roots and branches of Washington’s entire forest of graft. Indeed, even repealing Citizens United would unto itself do little to truly corruption-proof the financing of political campaigns.

So what is a real anti-corruption agenda that actually addresses the crisis?

To start, a Democratic Congress must use its subpoena power to build off investigative reporting and expose how Super Pacs have become a key vehicle for quid-pro-quo corruption in both parties. Congressional inquiries exposing these schemes could both boost existing federal legislation to outlaw Super Pacs, as well as a landmark federal court case aiming to limit donations to Super Pacs.

Democrats must also pass their longstanding legislation requiring full disclosure of the sources of $1bn of dark money, and they must pass Senator Chris Van Hollen’s new bill closing loopholes that let........

© The Guardian