The Democrats' Path Forward: Become the Anti-Corruption Party

But to reform the system they first need to reform the Democratic Party.

Seventy-three percent of Americans believe a member of Congress would be very or somewhat likely to accept a bribe if offered one. Similar percentages believe the same about virtually every level of American government, from mayors to Supreme Court justices. And when asked who really holds sway in Washington, the public is unequivocal: 80% say major donors have too much influence, while only 28% believe lawmakers adequately represent the people in their districts. The numbers reveal a democracy in crisis: a public that has fundamentally lost faith in the integrity of its governing institutions.

The hunger for reform is overwhelming. Yet Democrats—uniquely positioned to lead—have failed to seize it.

The Democratic Party brand is in tatters. Even among Democratic voters, approval of party leadership has plummeted to historic lows. This creates a vicious cycle: when the brand is toxic, individual candidates distance themselves from it to survive. But every candidate who runs away further weakens the brand for everyone else, making the next cycle of distancing even more necessary.

Political strategists offer two familiar solutions to lead Democrats out of the wilderness. Some urge Democrats to move center—run moderates, soften cultural positions, appeal to swing voters. Others push left—run progressives, mobilize the base, inspire irregular voters. But academic research shows that neither approach yields significant electoral gains in contemporary elections. And neither is without tradeoffs.

The way out isn't about left versus right; it's about clean versus corrupt, reform versus a rigged system, the people versus oligarchs.

Corruption is the achilles heel of authoritarians and frequently their downfall. To truly leverage this strategy, Democrats need to demonstrate authentic commitment to self-reform. This requires cleaning up deceptive fundraising practices, breaking free from billionaire donors, and supporting popular reforms like banning congressional stock trading. Superficial adoption of anti-corruption rhetoric without genuine action would be perceived as disingenuous and undermine the entire effort.

This also addresses a critical liability: the perception that Democrats are primarily committed to returning to the status quo. The party needs to shed that image and remake itself as a genuine reform party, advocating for systemic changes that address the public's deep-seated frustrations, not merely adjusting the margins of a system many view as fundamentally unfair.

Across decades and continents, corruption has been the fatal weakness of authoritarian regimes. From Manila to Cairo, strongmen who seemed immovable were suddenly swept aside—Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, when millions revolted against his family’s kleptocracy, and Hosni Mubarak in 2011, when mass protests over corruption and cronyism ended his three-decade rule. Ukraine’s 2014 Revolution of Dignity erupted when mass protests over corruption, oligarchic influence, and Yanukovych’s betrayal of EU-alignment forced his removal from power. Malaysia's seemingly unshakeable Najib Razak fell in 2018 when voters rebelled against the 1MDB scandal. In Guatemala, President Otto Pérez Molina resigned in 2015 amid the La Línea customs fraud scandal and was soon jailed on corruption charges. Bangladesh's Sheikh Hasina resigned in 2024 after student-led demonstrations against corruption. Most recently, mass protests in Nepal toppled Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli and installed former Chief Justice Sushila Karki, widely viewed as an anti-corruption reformer, as interim leader. Even in democracies, corruption scandals have toppled ruling parties, from Italy’s Tangentopoli in the 1990s to South Korea’s Candlelight Revolution in 2017, when mass protests over influence-peddling led to President Park Geun-hye’s impeachment.

This pattern holds a crucial lesson for America’s current moment. As democratic norms erode and elections become increasingly tilted, anti-corruption movements offer what partisan politics cannot: the moral authority to unite society against a rigged system. When traditional opposition fails, these movements succeed because they transcend party lines, mobilizing citizens around a cause larger than any candidate: the fundamental fairness of the system itself.

Research shows that in polarized societies, the most effective opposition doesn’t fight on the traditional left-right battlefield where positions are entrenched. Instead, it creates an entirely new axis of conflict.¹ Framing the stakes as clean versus corrupt shifts debate from rigid ideological divisions to a universally resonant moral question: are you on the side of the people or a corrupt elite?

Moderation and bipartisanship, the strategy the Democratic leadership appears to have settled on, requires abandoning core constituencies—softening on civil rights to appeal to conservatives, or muting economic populism to satisfy donors. These compromises risk fracturing the coalition the party needs to win.

An anti-corruption platform demands no such tradeoffs. It unites disparate groups around a shared grievance: the belief that the system is rigged against ordinary people. It speaks to the progressive who sees corporate money corrupting climate policy and stagnating wages, the suburban moderate disgusted by congressional insider trading, and even the disillusioned conservative who believes Washington has been captured by special interests. Each group brings specific concerns, but all share the conviction that powerful elites are gaming the system at everyone's expense.

This creates a fundamentally different kind of politics. Rather than positioning themselves as competent managers of a broken system, anti-corruption messaging repositions Democrats as the only political party truly committed to reforming the system.

Republicans have made this almost too easy. Trump accepts $400 million planes from foreign governments while making billions from shady crypto schemes. Cabinet positions go to mega-donors. Untold millions flow into his businesses from foreign governments. Conservative Supreme Court justices accept luxury vacations from billionaires with cases before the court. It’s no surprise that when pollsters ask voters to describe the Republican Party, the most common response is “corrupt.”

Yet Democrats can’t capitalize on this vulnerability because they lack credibility. When party leaders condemn big money while courting billionaires to fund their Super PACs, when they decry corporate influence while taking millions from industries they regulate, voters see hypocrisy.

Most voters don't differentiate between large campaign donations and outright bribes. While legally distinct, in public opinion, they're functionally the same. Voters see a system where wealth buys access and influence, and they're not wrong.

The conventional wisdom insists Democrats need big money to compete. This is demonstrably false. As I’ve detailed elsewhere, Democrats have structural advantages they’re failing to leverage: Republicans depend on mega-donors for 56% of their funding versus only 18% for Democrats. Democrats maintain robust support from small and mid-sized donors, fueled by professionals and overwhelming support from younger generations—an advantage they are arguably squandering.

Moreover, the big money Democrats chase primarily funds campaign ads—perhaps the most overrated tool in politics. A large meta-analysis of 49 field experiments found campaign ads barely move vote shares, if at all. My own research analyzing 1.2 million precinct-level results showed that doubling an opponent’s Super PAC spending shifts votes by a mere 0.02%. Yet consultants have built an empire convincing candidates otherwise.

Campaign ads are the snake oil of politics: expensive cure-alls, backed by faith rather than evidence, peddled by consultants who profit whether the remedy works or not. The result is a perpetual fundraising machine where candidates become endless fundraisers, degrading themselves with pitches that would make infomercial hosts cringe. The only difference is that snake oil salesmen eventually had to leave town.

Every time Democrats take corporate PAC money or court billionaire donors, they validate the “all politicians are the same” narrative and surrender the moral authority to attack corruption. The party that proves it’s not for sale—through action, not rhetoric—will gain enormous political advantage. But this requires genuine sacrifice and self-reform.

Democrats stand at a crossroads. They can continue tweaking messages, chasing a dwindling population of swing voters, while positioning themselves as the defender of a system voters fundamentally distrust. Or they can seize the moment and build a brand candidates will be proud to run on, not away from.

The corruption of the Trump era has handed them the perfect opening. But this opportunity has a price—the party must reform itself first, making costly sacrifices that prove their commitment is real.

If Democrats have the courage to clean house, reject big money, and become the authentic voice of systemic reform, they won't only win elections—they'll restore faith in democratic governance that legalized corruption has nearly destroyed. The choice is theirs: remain complicit in a broken system, or lead the fight to fix it. There is no middle ground. Either Democrats lead the fight to clean up the system or they will be remembered as complicit in its collapse.

1. See Murat Somer , Jennifer L. McCoy & Russell E. Luke (2021): “Pernicious polarization, autocratization and opposition strategies” for an excellent discussion of “transformative repolarization.”