See Wes Clark’s offensive remarks and commentary over at powerblog. In addition to his remarks being offensive, it also demonstrated how influenced Democrats are by money. Democratic activists constantly chide Republicans for being beholden to corporate interests but Republicans get money from a much wider variety of sources than Democrats do. Democrats tend to get their money from: trial lawyers in the south, Wall Street and real estate tycoons in the Northeast, and Hollywood and Sillicon Valley in the West. Any Democratic presidential hopeful despite all his/her populist man of the people rhetoric spends a good deal of time courting these groups and can ill afford to piss any of these groups off.

While Republicans raise a lot of money from “big business”, Republicans mainly get it because they are in fact supportive of big business and tend to be supportive of even businesses or people that don't support them. Goldman Sachs, gives more to Democrats than Republicans but you never see Republicans attack them. Even Martha Stewart, who is a huge Democratic donor was defended by the Conservative Wall Street Journal op-ed page and Republicans like Larry Kudlow. Since Democrats claim to be the party of “main street” and “average joe” and not “Wall Street”, one wonders what Democrats promise people on Wall Street in return for their support.