Rachel Maddow talked to Democratic pollster Celinda Lake about the Democrats' strategy for the mid-term elections: using the emerging scandal around anonymous corporate donors pouring money into Republican coffers as a campaign issue. Lake explained to Maddow why -- contrary to Beltway conventional wisdom -- this is a good issue for Democrats to run on.

LAKE: This is an issue that is a good October surprise for the Democrats and the progressives. It’s a way of really raising the fundamental question about whose side you're on. It ties into an economic narrative. We’ve had a hard time getting off the ground. In twenty-two congressional districts where the Chamber is running its ads with foreign money, 184,000 jobs have been outsourced to many of these very same foreign corporations. These people aren’t putting up their money for nothing. What are they buying? And this isn’t free speech, it’s bought speech and the public has a right to know who’s trying to buy their candidates.

As they both noted, this message is going to resonate in blue-collar districts where the Democrats are having the most trouble, and it keeps the message simple: Whose side are you on?

Naturally, Mark Halperin doesn't think the Democrats should be running on this issue. From Hardball earlier the same evening, here's Chris Matthews, Mark Halperin and Richard Wolffe discussing why everything is doom and gloom for Democrats in the midterm elections. Halperin of course thinks the Democrats should not be "engaging in strictly assassination of Republicans" or going after the Chamber of Commerce and their foreign donors and instead President Obama should be telling the country what he wants to do next.

Why that's some winning issue when he knows full well the Republicans will just obstruct anything he tries to get passed and then claim Democrats are incapable of governing is beyond me. I think the last thing the Democrats should be doing is taking any political advice from Mark Halperin.

Here's a prime example of the inside the Beltway common wisdom Rachel was talking about from Matthews and company.