After nearly a year and a half into the 2008 cycle, which has seen the Democratic campaign committees generally hold a 50 percent or even 100 percent cash-on-hand advantage over their Republican counterparts, the GOP committees have finally begun to catch up (or at least the Republican National Committee has). Take a look at the latest numbers filed with the Federal Election Commission Friday:

Committee	May Receipts	May Disbursements	May Cash-on-Hand	May Debts & Obligations
DSCC (est.)	$5,920,000.00	$4,950,000.00	$38,530,000.00	$0
NRSC (est.)	$4,890,000.00	$2,700,000.00	$21,560,000.00	$0
DCCC	$6,091,737.14	$4,192,275.05	$47,174,105.00	$0
NRCC	$5,017,140.54	$5,096,869.15	$6,654,801.50	$0
DNC	$4,795,890.97	$5,263,698.72	$3,965,886.11	$6,306.93
RNC	$24,377,740.11	$11,513,030.77	$53,508,001.57	$0
Total Democrats	$16,807,628.11	$14,405,973.77	$89,669,991.11	$6,306.93
Total Republicans	$24,377,740.11	$19,309,899.92	$81,722,803.07	$0

The congressional campaign committees for the Democrats continue to hold about a 3-to-1 cash-on-hand advantage over those of the Republicans, strongly suggesting that those who believe that the two parties' efforts to control the 111th Congress will be financially on par are just not right. The Democrats' 7-to-1 advantage among House campaign committees is particularly remarkable.

Obviously the numbers from the Republican and Democratic national committees leave room for concern. The RNC is raising a huge amount of money -- no doubt in part because John McCain is soliciting contributions in amounts approaching $100,000 in value, a huge chunk of which goes to the national committee -- and the DNC isn't matching it. Yet. If you want to help eat away at that difference, head over to Act Blue today and make a contribution.

All of the parties' political committees were required to release their monthly campaign finance details yesterday. Here is what the reports show:

Committee	April Receipts	April Disbursements	April Cash-on-Hand	April Debts & Obligations
DSCC (est.)	$4,200,000.00	$4,500,000.00	$37,600,000.00	$0
NRSC (est.)	$4,300,000.00	$2,300,000.00	$19,400,000	$0
DCCC	$5,015,425.30	$4,061,236.36	$45,274,642.96	$704,090.25
NRCC	$4,252,190.13	$4,688,146.93	$6,734,530.11	$0
DNC	$4,752,068.78	$5,630,122.78	$4,433,693.86	$31,213.84
RNC	$19,845,692.95	$10,275,411.07	$40,643,292.23	$0
Total Democrats	$13,967,494.08	$14,191,359.14	$87,308,336.82	$735,304.09
Total Republicans	$28,397,883.08	17,263,558	$66,777,822.34	$0

As you can see, this was a big fundraising month for the GOP, cutting the Democratic committees' cash-on-hand lead by about a third. This underscores the need to ensure that money continues to go into the committees -- particularly the Democratic National Committee, though presumably the DNC's fundraising issues should virtually fall away when the nominee takes over the committee -- so that the Democrats' fundraising advantage is not frittered away.

That said, let's not overlook the fact that despite the remarkable month the Republican National Committee had in April, the Democratic committees nonetheless hold a $20 million overall advantage in available money. What's more, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has close to a 7-to-1 net cash-on-hand advantage over the National Republican Congressional Committee, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee still has close to a 2-to-1 advantage in that metric over the National Republican Senatorial Committee. On top of that, Barack Obama raised in excess of 70 percent more in April than did John McCain, and Obama and Hillary Clinton combined to raise about three times as much money as McCain. So overall the financial health of the Democratic Party remains very sound.

Down in Mississippi, the Republicans ran a campaign where they targeted Democrat Travis Childers as being a pawn of Barack Obama under the theory that if they could mention Jeremiah Wright often enough they could scare voters into keeping the state's first congressional district in Republican hands. This wasn't their first attempt at such a move. Next door in Louisiana the Republicans tried to make another special election earlier this month into a referendum on Obama right at the time Wright was saturating the news -- only to lose a seat that had been in Republican hands for more than three decades.

Not only did Republicans lose last night in Mississippi, they lost bad. In a district that George W. Bush carried by 25 percentage points in 2004, Childers won by 8 points -- a swing of 33 points. That's right, 33 points. A great part of this is that voters are beginning to approach congressional elections more like they were parliamentary ones, backing the party instead of thinking just about the candidates themselves. Indeed, the results looked a lot more like the generic congressional ballot in which the Democrats hold a lead approaching 20 points than they do a contest simply between two well-matched candidates.

But it goes beyond voters saying yes to the Democratic Party in corners of the country where the Democrats didn't even seriously try to run in as recently as even a few years ago. This is at least in part a reaction to the deliberate attempt by the Republicans to obfuscate the real issues facing this country and attempt to make this election about the Reverend Wright and all that entails.

This tactic does not work. It did not work in rural Louisiana. It did not work in rural Mississippi. And it will not work elsewhere. Voters, whether suburban, urban or rural, do not want to be condescended to by elites in Washington, DC who think that they can be swayed by ethnic and racial and just pure dirty politics. Just because an election is held in a conservative part of the South does not mean that voters think about race like Jim Clark did in 1965 or Orval Faubus did in 1957 or Strom Thurmond did in 1948. Voters do not like being treated like they are racists by anyone, particularly by a party to whom they have given their support in recent elections.

And yet the leadership of the Republican Party appears determined to continue this strategy, pledging to continue to run ads making the election about Obama, talking about immigration as a "tar baby" for Obama and others, and generally acting in a way that would make Abraham Lincoln roll in his grave. Perhaps when Tom Davis said today that his party was "below the floor" he should have said that the Republican Party is in the much, in the gutter, in a place where the American people simply do not want to go. If this trend keeps up, Republicans will be lucky to only lose 20 seats in the House come November.

First a big shout out to MyDD for their front page links to our coverage at Cotton Mouth of MS-01.

We are in a street fight down here.  Travis Childers has an oppurtunity to lay claim for the Democratic Party a congresssional district that voted 62% for Bush in 2004.  He is up against Republican Greg Davis who has offered nothing but vicious attack ads.  

Isn't it always?

In this case, the NRCC has managed to turn lemons into lemonade, spinning Cazayoux's 3 point win in LA-06 on Saturday as a disappointment for the Democrat who was up by 9 and 7 in the final 2 polls of the district. Specifically, the desperate NRCC is touting its ads tying Cazayoux to Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi as the reason for the gap's closing and putting Democrats on notice.

From CQ:

While hailing the simultaneous special election victory by Republican state Sen. Steve Scalise in the overwhelmingly Republican 1st District in and near New Orleans, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) contended that Cazayoux was actually a strong favorite to win the 6th District seat, despite its usual Republican tilt.

The NRCC continued that it had cut deeply into the supposed lead held by Cazayoux by running ads that sought to tie him to more liberal Democratic leaders such as Illinois Sen. Barack Obama , the front-running candidate for the party's presidential nomination, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.

"This should come as a warning shot to Democrats," the NRCC said in a post-election press release. "The elitist behavior of the Democratic front-runner and the liberal and extremist positions that he and his fellow Democrats in Congress have staked their claim to, do not appear to be as salient as they once hoped."

Pretty hilarious. They actually seem to believe their own BS or at the very least they're just showing their plumage for donors who've lost faith in the committee. Either way though, there's no doubt what the NRCC's 2008 plan for tough races in red districts is going to be, whether Barack Obama wins the nomination or not. I say bring it on.

Last night, in a special election to fill the remaining term of Republican Roger Wicker, who moved up to the Senate when GOP Senator Trett Lott stepped down, Democrat Travis Childers received about 49.4 percent of the vote. When his vote was combined with that of Democratic state Rep. Steve Holland, who (in short) tried futilely to have his name removed from the ballot, the Democratic vote amounted to 50.6 percent of the overall count.

Why would this be important? Simple: Mississippi's first congressional district, where this election was held, is very Republican. According to the Cook PVI, the district tends to lean about 10 percentage points more Republican than the nation as a whole in presidential elections. What's more, the National Republican Congressional Committee spent about twice as much on the race than did the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee -- despite the fact that the DCCC has $37 million more in the bank than the NRCC.

Childers unfortunately will not go straight to Congress, as he would have had he received 410 more votes, or about 0.7 percentage points more of the vote. Instead, because no candidate received 50 percent of the vote, plus one, there will be a runoff election held in the district on May 13.

Make no mistake, however: This was a major win for the Democratic Party and an even larger loss for the GOP. If a Republican is unable to crack 50 percent -- or indeed even receive a plurality of a vote -- in a special election in a very Republican district in a very Republican state when national Republicans spend twice as much money as national Democrats, how are they seriously supposed to be able to compete in November? Even more in the short run, if the NRCC is in a big money hole, how are they going to be able to defend this seat, as well as the open GOP seat in Louisiana's sixth congressional district which is now rated as leans Democratic (despite its Cook PVI of R+7), without once again falling into debt, thus hampering the party's efforts down the road?

Basically, the GOP now faces a choice between going for broke trying to save two more very Republican congressional districts from flipping to the Democrats before November and saving money in the hopes of being able to save such districts in November -- and even if the party opts to spend the money now, there's no guarantee that they will be successful (note their loss in the Republican-leaning Illinois 6 14 district earlier this year despite the NRCC's major investment in the race). And as Matt Stoller aptly and succinctly put it, "No one likes Republicans, even in R+10 districts."

It's the 20th of April today, so that means it's that time of the month again: Time to look at the campaign finance filings for all six of the parties' campaign committees.

Committee	March Receipts	March Disbursements	March Cash-on-Hand	March Debts & Obligations
DSCC (est.)	$8,200,000.00	N/A	$37,800,000.00	$0
NRSC (est.)	$4,200,000.00	N/A	$17,300,000	$0
DCCC	$10,110,960.72	$3,812,233.01	$44,320,511.18	$0
NRCC	$7,100,525.71	$5,064,243.78	$7,170,486.91	$0
DNC	$5,988,279.13	$5,433,437.21	$5,311,747.86	$0
RNC	$15,366,745.54	$9,296,497.49	$31,073,010.35	$0
Total Democrats	$24,299,239.85	N/A	$87,432,259.04	$0
Total Republicans	$26,667,271.25	N/A	$55,543,497.26	$0

Interestingly enough, this is actually the fourth straight month in which the three Republican campaign committees combined have managed to outraise the three Democratic campaign committees combined. Over these four months, the Republican National Committee, National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee have raised a combined $82,848,883.92 to the $72,185,156.45 raised by the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee -- better than a $10.6 million advantage.

During this time, however, the Democratic committees' net cash-on-hand advantage over the GOP committees actually grew from $28,777,997.81 at the end of November to $31,888,761.78 today. That means that over the past four months, the Republicans have effectively wasted close to $14 million -- spending that much more than the Democrats -- to little avail. The Republicans couldn't hold on to the congressional seat vacated by former Speaker of the House Denny Hastert; It looks like they're having an awfully difficult time defending the congressional seat they must defend in a special election down in Louisiana -- all of this while frittering away millions and millions of dollars.

Now is there room to grow, room for the Democrats to do a better job in the fundraising department? There's always room to do better. Specifically, it would be preferable if the DNC weren't outraised by the RNC by a $9.4 million margin. That said, all in all, the fact that the Democratic committees have close to $32 million more in the bank than the Republican committees leaves little to really complain or worry about at this juncture.

More tough times over at the National Republican Congressional Committee. Here's The Hill's Alex Bolton:

Senior Republicans have ignored the impassioned plea of House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) that they help the party raise more money for the November election.

While the ranking Republicans of several committees have given tens of thousands of dollars to the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), others have given nothing or very little.  

[...]

Boehner's impatience with his colleagues may be explained in part by the enthusiastic response Democratic leaders have received from members of their caucus. This year alone, many rank-and-file Democrats have given significantly more money than some ranking Republicans.

This isn't a new problem for House Republicans. As long back as five months ago, and even earlier than that likely, House GOP Leader Boehner has been futilely asking his members to pony up their campaign cash, which they have refused to do. With effectively no prospect of regaining the majority this cycle and little hope of retaking the House any time soon, Republicans in the chamber feel little drive to contribute to their combined effort (a fact that actually compounds the problem as it makes it even less likely that the party will be able to take back seats from the Democrats). Indeed, as of the end of February, the last point through which we have numbers on all of the parties' campaign committees, the NRCC faced more than a $34 million hole in relation to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee when debts and obligations are taken into account. So with an inability to get their own members to contribute and a depressed base, these remain dire days for the House Republicans.