In 2006, Democrats seized both the House and Senate in the midterm elections. At the time, a deeply unpopular president was presiding over a deeply unpopular war. But in exit polls, the top issue that voters cited was government corruption. The Jack Abramoff scandal had recently shined a light on the ways high-priced lobbyists doled out goodies to members of Congress in exchange for favors. It apparently drove people to the polls to boot out the Republicans who were in charge.

Democrats are hoping that the same thing might happen in 2018. Monday they are releasing a new reform agenda, entitled “A Better Deal for Our Democracy.”

Today I spoke to Rep. John Sarbanes (Md.), the Democrats’ point person on this issue, who argued that this is something voters are eager for. “The public can get mad enough to reach for solutions that are pretty dramatic,” he said. “Witness the person who’s in the White House right now. So if they can get angry enough to produce that kind of change, I think they can get angry enough to insist that we actually fix their democratic institutions, and that’s what we’re trying to do with this program.”

Like most such documents, the Democrats’ new plan is general and vague, pitched to voters with marginal awareness who only need to be convinced that there’s a problem with the system and that Democrats want to do something about it, even if they didn’t quite catch what it is Democrats want to do. And let’s be honest: Most of the time, that’s all a party has to convince people of. But there is policy meat underneath it, in the form of bills Democrats have been introducing for the past couple of years.

Here are some of the substantive measures they propose:

  • Voting: Automatic voter registration, paper-verified votes, an end to felon disenfranchisement, steps to make it easier for voters with disabilities to cast ballots, same-day registration, expanded early voting, an end to partisan gerrymandering.
  • Ethics: New enforcement power for the Office of Government Ethics, tighter disclosure requirements for lobbyists.
  • Campaign finance: Tax-deductible donations for House candidates, 6-to-1 matching of contributions up to $150 to enhance value of small-dollar contributions, a constitutional amendment to repeal the Citizens United decision.

These kinds of plans are always presented as transformative, with the potential to at last bring about an age free of corruption and special-interest influence. Which perhaps isn’t surprising; you don’t expect politicians to say, “Here are some ideas that will have a marginally positive effect, even though the fundamental problems will remain.”

But in some ways, that’s the truth. It’s particularly true on ethics reform, which we hear more about whenever there’s some kind of scandal in Congress. And every president comes into office saying they’re going to eliminate the power of special interests and run an unusually ethical administration.

When candidate Donald Trump promised that, it was a joke; any sane person would have realized that, far from draining the swamp, he’d inaugurate a new era of government corruption, and he hasn’t disappointed. But even presidents who sincerely wanted to reduce special interest influence, like Barack Obama, have often failed.

When I asked Sarbanes about that, he argued that the reforms Obama put in place (such as making it harder for lobbyists to serve in the executive branch) did have some effect, but he acknowledged that it was “operating inside of a larger culture which is very hard to break free from. And it won’t be easy this time either. But it’s what the public wants. And we have to be candid about that and acknowledge why they feel so powerless, and try to do something about it.”

If there’s one area where genuine reform with positive effects seems possible, it’s in voting. We’re already seeing many of these reforms pass at the state level; a dozen states have passed automatic voter registration, in which all adults are automatically registered when they do something like get a driver’s license, and 16 states allow or will soon allow same-day registration so that you can register to vote on Election Day. Most but not all are Democratic-controlled states. We know that automatic voter registration can both increase turnout and make the electorate more representative, which is precisely why Republicans don’t like it. On the federal level, Sarbanes suggests that we need to “set a floor” for voter protections, including by passing a new Voting Rights Act, since the Supreme Court gutted the old one in 2013.

When I asked about the fact that combating the influence of dark money has become a years-long game of whack-a-mole, with some new vehicle for pouring money into campaigns cropping up whenever new restrictions are put on the last one (527s, super PACs, 501(c)(4)s), Sarbanes stressed that while we can keep trying, the best way to deal with it is by enhancing the role of small-dollar contributions.

“Let’s build a completely different place for candidates to go to fund their campaigns,” he said. “Give the power back to everyday Americans. And then you’d see a lot of candidates would abandon those special interests, because they’d much rather be turning in the direction of their constituents.”

There are some real questions to be asked about whether offering matching funds for small-dollar contributions could really liberate candidates and members of Congress from the influence of big money. But it’s useful to remind ourselves that this issue is potent enough that even Republicans, who like the system just fine the way it is, pretend that they want to get rid of special-interest power. So almost anything is worth trying.