That was a good idea. But we stopped.
This isn't recent; we've been heading this way for decades, and not by accident.
The voting public gets tired of the squabbling and seeing the constructive type of reform fail, and switches its attention to the other professional party. The "reforms" then put forth by Republicans are all about getting rid of restrictions on corporate interests, appealing to a fallacy that restrictions on corpos are akin to restrictions on individuals (from the same vein as Steinbeck's "temporarily embarrassed millionaires"). When the Republicans get the green light, it's then full speed ahead for sidelining the US government in favor of unaccountable corporate power - as we've seen demonstrated in stark relief with Trump.
People will then slowly realize they've been had, and support for Democrats will grow. But any attempt to rebuild what got destroyed then fails (the original dynamic), and the cycle repeats.
Plus if your income is above sat 150,000 USD you can at most donate say 10000 per year to all political candidates, PACs and anything related to influencing political activities.
Or better yet, all these donations must be fully published with the name of the people or all companies related to the company donating. No dark money at all. The published list must be in plain language and downloadable as a plain Text File.