And by definition, they have deeper pockets than us -- they can afford to push it farther than we can, because in the end, they control the guys with the guns who can come and take everything away from us.
A few years back I was involved in a local controversy. The local authorities made three tries to pass a referendum, being rejected each time. Finally, on the fourth try, they were victorious. There was no difference between what was proposed in #3 and #4, except:
1. They changed voting hours, so that polls were only open in the afternoon; and
2. They sent postcards to the entire town (paid for by us, of course) containing information that was objectively false. [1]
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[1] Not relevant to this discussion, but the referendum was for school construction. The proposal contained a bunch of frills such as expanding the cafeteria. The false mailing I mentioned explicitly stated that the proposal was for classroom space only, which was patently false. But the mailing was timed to arrive the afternoon before the vote, when it was too late to do anything about it. And they knew we couldn't afford a lawyer, and the amount that could be done ex post facto was limited anyway. No one ever held them to account.
That's true in one sense. However, pretending that everything would work out fine were it not for a few bad apples will certainly hamper attempts to keep the system running properly.
It would be far better to acknowledge that much of the behavior of a democracy results from Public Choice Theory, and so it's going to work out this way even if your favored politicians are lucky enough to win the election. With that out of the way, we can start to shore up the places where the system is vulnerable to malfeasance.
So, 2 steps:
1) Call congressmen to directly remedy problem in this particular case (I haven't done this but should, they do listen).
2) Address the problem of lobbying generally, that's a bigger discussion and every idea I have to fix it could have unintended consequences.
The media is GREAT at shaping perspective.
In Germany the law is pushed under the pretense of fighting child pornography. Some people who are against it are now being described in media as people who are against fighting child pornography - even by tech magazines that should have a better understanding.