Carter Eskew's lobbying arm
sent out this memo to Democratic candidates:
After a thorough review of early public polling on the new Medicare prescription drug benefit, our analysis suggests that support for the program is solid. Five months into the program, enrolled seniors are satisfied with the program, found enrollment to be easy and think it's saving them money.
What the memo didn't note is that Carter Eskew also has various clients in Big Pharma. This wasn't political advice, this was client services to its corporate clients.
Carter Eskew is also Lieberman's media firm. As Stoller says:
The people who know how to run campaigns are not politicians, they are the people who run campaigns. The fact that this class of operative/consultant is working for corporate interests and not for Democratic gain means that there is little to no infrastructure that can effectively push for legislative and political victories. That infrastructure is too busy getting rich off of corporate payola. Had this infrastructure been focusing on winning for Democrats, we'd have a campaign ready to go based on the donut hole. It's not like we didn't know this was coming.
This machine is incredibly powerful, but it's vulnerable, and that's why DC is freaking out about the Lieberman challenge.
The establishment is throwing everything plus the kitchen sink at us. And this is why. Too much money is at stake to let democracy dictate who should represent the Democratic Party.