Among the many weird things that the U.S. have but real democratic countries don't, the most promiscuous of them is this flow of private money into politics.
Campaign financing, U.S. style, is just legalized bribing. In any healthy democracy it would be illegal. In the U.S. is just the way things are.
Back in my country, the bribes are illegal and mostly untraceable.
Money will go into politics. Nobody can stop this, and it should be out in the open and traceable.
Obviously, no bribe at all is the best, but is this happening anywhere?
Watching things from outside, it feels like the US is a pay-to-win democracy. It's hard to say where exactly the line between lobbying vs. corruption is drawn.