How do we overcome these two obstacles to real democracy?
1. As Mayer Rothschild said, "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws," bankers have an effective veto over our democracy and can dictate policy to both major parties in the US and even the social democracies of Europe.
How can we make banks subordinate to democracy instead of vice versa?
2. How can we have representative government that isn't subject to corruption by lead or gold? That is, or representatives can be bribed or threatened (and the threats acted on if they don't comply) into doing other than what is in our best interest. The very wealthy have one or two other tricks they can use at election time too: ridicule in the media or simply having the media ignore candidates regardless of how popular they are with the public.
Campaign finance reform only partially addresses the gold part--jobs after politicians leave office as lobbyists, CEO's, and do nothing board members are also a financial carrot the rest of us can't match even if we could theoretically scrape together the money to match the donations of the wealthy.