Oh, I agree with the first part of this article, so strongly. Exactly how my historical recollection lays. Les Coleman’s essay on Western democracy offers a useful sequence: neoliberal structure shapes conduct; conduct determines performance. Democracies did not merely hire the wrong leaders. Over four decades, they rewrote the rules governing capital, labor, taxation, regulation and public investment—then acted surprised when concentrated wealth became concentrated political power. A system organized around grift will reliably produce grifters, however earnestly each election promises new moral leadership.

This is why some of Coleman’s proposed fixes feel strangely lacking. Paying politicians salaries comparable to corporate executives might change who seeks office, but it does not change who finances campaigns, controls attention or can afford the American political lifestyle. This hits like an out-of-tune piano, to my ears, compared to the strong start of the article.

The serious remedies are the ones that alter the geometry: democracy vouchers, citizens’ assemblies, stronger public institutions, meaningful accountability for white-collar wrongdoing and limits on inherited concentrations of wealth. Sound like “Democratic Socialism” to you? What Bernie has been saying for decades? Return to New Deal progressivism that grew the greatest economy of our history.

Coleman concludes that the crisis of democracy requires more democracy. Yes—but democracy is not simply more occasions to vote. It is the deliberate removal of the gateways through which money becomes authority.

Oh, and overturn SpeechNow vs. FEC and Citizens United.