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Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid has repeatedly questioned the Koch brothers' patriotism.

From the Senate floor to television advertisements across the country, Democrats are assailing Republicans for their alliancewith billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid has repeatedly questioned the brothers' patriotism, accusing the GOP of suffering from an"addiction to Koch." A recent ad in Michigan, as in other places, features images of the Kochs with a grave warning that aGOP candidate seeks to aid the "wealthy and powerful."

The coordinated strategy is designed to try and counteract the tens of millions of dollars in attack ads funded largely bythe Kochs and their network of conservative groups that have been pummeling vulnerable Democrats over their support for Obamacare.

Democrats are facing increasingly steep odds in the midterms, due at least in part to the apparent success thus far by conservativegroups in targeting key races with hard-hitting ads.

Yet the Democrats' anti-Koch strategy is risky.

The brothers are not a familiar presence to many voters, making it hard to demonize them. Moreover, as Democrats have embracedthe new era of big-money donations and super PACs in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, they, too, aregrowing more reliant on ideological billionaires such as Tom Steyer, the hedge-fund executive who plans to target Republicansover climate change.

While many Democratic operatives say they think the anti-Koch attacks will help mobilize the liberal base, several also said that Democrats must tread carefully.

"If voters see it as an overwhelmingly negative campaign, it'll effectively turn people off and keep them from voting," saidJerry Rephan, a Democratic Party county chairman in Arkansas.

Republicans point to their own past miscalculations to argue that the Democrats' Koch-centered strategy is little more thanfolly. The GOP's attempts in 2006 to decry Democrats for their reliance on billionaire George Soros proved ineffective, Republicansnow say -- the Democrats won control of the Senate that year, giving them control of both chambers.

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Democrats anti-Koch strategy is risky