The results of a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released on Oct. 18 show that 66 percent of the American people believe President Trump “is using the presidency to enrich himself.”This follows on the heels of a Fox News survey showing that 88 percent are extremely or very concerned about government corruption, topping a list of issues including inflation, gas prices and health care.

Americans say they trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle each of those issues by “double digits.”And the Post poll contained more bad news for Trump and his party: there has been a steep increase in the percentage of self-identified Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who think the president is using his office to enrich himself.

At first glance, these results would seem to be teeing up a Democratic sweep in the upcoming midterm elections, suggesting the wisdom of the strategy pursued by Democrats across the country in making corruption in Washington a central part of their campaigns.

None has done this better than Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.). In appearance after appearance, he has hammered home the following message: “This is the most corrupt administration of all time, and everybody knows it. While Americans pay more and get less, while our insurance premiums skyrocket and hospitals close down services, while American service members are wounded and killed in action, the first family (is) raking in billions of dollars.”But Democrats should remember that throughout American history, it has seldom been easy to turn the perceived corruption of one party into an electoral advantage for the other. That is because voters tend to see both parties — and politics itself — as corrupt.

If Democrats want to capitalize on the corruption issue, they need to do more than point the finger of blame at Trump. They need to offer a set of proposals to combat corruption, regardless of who is in office.

So far, they have done a lot of finger-pointing while offering few, if any, proposals.

Part of the problem that Democrats face is that Trump has driven home the message that the Biden administration, including the former president and his son, Hunter, was the most corrupt in American history. As The Washington Post notes, as far back as 2019, Trump was frequently making accusations that when Biden was vice president, he had intervened to stop a Ukrainian prosecutor from “investigating Ukraine’s largest private gas company, Burisma, which had added Biden’s son, Hunter, to its board in 2014.”Trump has used Hunter Biden as a whipping boy for his claims about the Biden family’s corruption, alleging that Hunter received millions in payments from China as a way to curry favor with his father.

The president has been aided by his allies in Congress as well. In 2023, the Oversight Committee of the House of Representatives claimed that “the Bidens and their associates created over 20 shell companies, raked in over $24 million [dollars] from China and other foreign countries, identified nine members of the Biden family who have participated or benefited from the business schemes, and confirmed that Joe Biden interacted with his family’s business associates at least two dozen times.”Such accusations, repeated over and over, foster public sentiment that, when it comes to corruption, “everybody does it.”That’s why, as far back as 20 years ago, around 60 percent of the American public believed that corruption was widespread throughout government. Since then, that belief has become even more widespread.

Large swathes of the public in this country seemed to have imbibed the teachings of a British aristocrat, Lord John Dahlberg Acton, who in 1887 wrote to Mandell Creighton, an Anglican bishop, “I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King, unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases.”

“Power,” he added, “tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”If all great men are bad men, then, it is not surprising that voters generally do not use their votes to punish leaders whom they believe are corrupt. Instead, the more they hear that leaders are corrupt, the more resigned they become to that fact.

In March, the Brennan Center for Justice wrote that “One of the most destructive effects of corruption is that it depresses democratic participation. Study after study demonstrates that people are significantly less likely to vote when they view their political system as corrupt.”

“This reduced political engagement,” the center continues, “is most pronounced among citizens who otherwise exhibit the strongest civic habits: Those who vote most consistently, consume the most political information, and have the highest capacity to mobilize are especially vulnerable to resignation when they believe corruption is pervasive.”This is not to say that Democrats should stop talking about corruption in the remaining days before the midterm elections. But as they do so, they need to realize that public concern about corruption in itself may not readily translate into votes for Democratic candidates for the House and Senate.

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.