My fellow Democratic politicians like to campaign on overturning the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which allowed corporations to spend unlimited sums advocating for candidates. Presidential hopefuls Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have made it a campaign platform.

I used to be fully on board. In 2014, I introduced landmark legislation to initiate an obscure procedure states can use to force Congress to change the Constitution. In retrospect, I was wrong.

During the debate of my measure, someone emailed me a Yale Law Review article by Professor Michael McConnell of Stanford University. It was thorough and well-researched, so good that it made me reconsider my opinion.

In essence, McConnell wrote that Citizens United could indeed have been wrongly decided. Money is not speech, and corporations are not people. However, he continued, Citizens United must stay on the books because there is no way to draft a law overturning it without violating another First Amendment principle: The Press Clause.

An example: You’re reading this op-ed in a newspaper. This newspaper and other media outlets, like CNN and Fox News, are corporations. Media outlets take positions daily that praise or criticize candidates. Indeed, this paper endorses candidates and asks that readers vote for or against them. And, of course, its parent corporation can spend unlimited corporate funds to publish and circulate. Take away that ability and you’ve destroyed the free press.

Many readers probably feel defensive now. Inevitably this topic triggers a five-step grieving process, which starts with denial. “Yes, but I hate those flyers special-interest groups mail during election season. Those are not newspapers!” Correct. Not currently.

But if we prohibited everyone except newspapers from using corporate funds to advocate for candidates, special-interest groups would just re-brand their flyers as newspapers. Try writing a law that prohibits those but allows your neighborhood paper – which is also small, free and delivered to your door – to editorialize for a candidate.

Inevitably some wise guy next says, “OK, let’s just define what is a bona fide media outlet, and ban others from advocacy.” That wouldn’t work either. Whereas this paper has existed a long time, most of us can remember when now-mainstream media outlets like The Daily Wire were plucky upstarts. Moreover, neighborhood and niche newspapers have small circulations but are important voices.

So you couldn’t define “bona fide” without banning startups or those with limited viewership from advocating for candidates. If the point of overturning Citizens United is to defeat plutocracy, you’d have just entrenched it further by limiting the rights of everyone but mainstream media.

Many now start realizing the magnitude of the challenge. But some continue: “We know certain outlets are in the business of providing news, not just during campaign season. Let’s prohibit corporations from political advocacy if they’re not in the year-round news business.” But that would just create a de facto blackout period on new press ventures and occasional magazine commentaries.

And remember: Even if you succeeded in getting these laws passed, the uber-rich would just start buying up media outlets. Oh wait – they already have.

At this point, all but the most stubborn acknowledge that corporate money swaying public opinion is here to stay. But some still insist they could draft a workable law, focusing on intent: “We’ll continue to allow corporations to weigh in on issues, but we’ll prohibit them from expending resources with the purpose of swaying an election.”

Oh great, I reply. Do you want to live in a country where someone can take a documentarian like Michael Moore to court, to examine his motives for creating a film? Do you want to live in a country where a court can decide whether Vogue’s latest profile of Michelle Obama was designed to sway the electorate? I don’t. That would chill free speech like nothing we’ve ever seen.

As much as we Democrats hate to admit it, Citizens United is here to stay. Misleading the public is disingenuous and demagogic. It’s time to stop.

Democrat Mike Gatto of Los Angeles is an attorney who served four terms in the California Assembly.