You've got to hand it to John Cornyn Ensign, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee -- he doesn't pull punches.

"If you have an R in front of your name, you better run scared," said Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who says the party will do well if it holds its losses to three or four seats.

Republicans have to defend nearly twice as many seats as the Democrats, and among already competitive races that ratio is closer to 9-to-1. The NRSC must do this despite the fact that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has close to an 80 percent advantage in cash-on-hand -- which isn't going away with the DSCC raising 20 percent more than the NRSC in months like the last one. What's more, the Democrats continue to hold a wide advantage in the generic congressional ballot. With numbers like these, it's little wonder that Ensign is hoping his party loses four seats this fall. Not much of a rallying cry -- though perhaps better than aiming for a 41-seat firewall...

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.

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.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is in a whole lot of trouble these days. The committee is had terrible difficulty recruiting strong challengers for the incumbent Democratic Senators up for reelection in 2008, as a result of which -- along with impressive Democratic recruitment and a raft of GOP retirements -- the NRSC appears destined to play defense rather than offense this cycle. To make matters worse, the NRSC has less than half the cash-on-hand of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee -- a $17 million disadvantage, to be precise -- making it all the more difficult for the GOP to limit its potential losses. A lot of the disparity in the relative sizes of the two committees' campaign accounts comes from contributions, or the lack thereof, from incumbents.

Republican senators with millions of dollars in their campaign accounts have given little or nothing to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), despite its desperate pleas for cash funds.

Fewer than 10 Senate Republicans met goals they received for an NRSC fundraiser with President Bush in McLean, Va., Tuesday evening. GOP senators were asked to contribute $100,000 from their campaign accounts or recruit four major donors for the event.

While NRSC Chairman Sen. John Ensign (Nev.) has been strapped for cash, his counterpart, Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), has persuaded colleagues to give hundreds of thousands of dollars from their personal campaign accounts to the party's cause.

[...]

Republican Sens. Arlen Specter (Pa.), Jim Bunning (Ky.), Richard Lugar (Ind.), Pete Domenici (N.M.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Olympia Snowe (Maine), Tom Coburn (Okla.), and Larry Craig (Idaho) have given nothing to the NRSC, according to campaign finance data collected by the Federal Election Commission and CQ Money Line, a website that tracks fundraising.

[...]

Democrats have showered Schumer with money. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) wrote a $250,000 check to the committee in June. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) contributed half a million dollars last year.

Even lesser-known Democrats have given hundreds of thousands: Sen. Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) has given the DSCC at least $100,000; Sen. Tom Carper (Del.) has transferred at least $250,000 from his campaign and Sen. Bill Nelson (Fla.) has kicked in at least $150,000.

Even Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.), who calls himself an "independent Democrat" and whom the committee opposed when he faced Ned Lamont, the official Democratic nominee in the 2006 Connecticut Senate race, gave $100,000 to the DSCC in December.

[...]

During a recent interview with The Hill, Ensign said about half the Senate's 49 Republicans were "not even close" to the pace needed to meet their fundraising goals. Ensign has asked members to raise $750,000-$3 million depending on seniority, leadership positions, and committee assignments.

When the Democrats can pull six figures out of Joe Lieberman, who is trapsing around the country and even the world on behalf of presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain, while the Republicans can't even successfully goad half of their members to come "even close" to meeting their fundraising targets, it says a number of things. First, this vast disparity means that the Republicans just cannot and likely will not be able to reach even financial footing with the Democrats. Perhaps more fundamentally, however, it means that Republican Senators don't believe they have much of any chances to stem their losses in November, because if they did they would be contributing to the cause. It's tough to be a Republican...

Well, it's the 20th of the month, so that means it's time to take a peak into the finances of the two parties three main fundraising arms -- the main party committee and the committees for each house of Congress.

Committee	February Receipts	February Disbursements	February Cash-on-Hand	February Debts & Obligations
DSCC (est.)	$4,800,000.00	$2,500,000.00	$32,800,000.00	$500,000.00
NRSC (est.)	$3,900,000.00	$1,900,000.00	$15,300,000	$0
DCCC	$6,211,397.69	$3,682,905.98	$38,021,783.47	$762,683.65
NRCC	$4,554,667.86	$5,090,460.12	$5,134,204.98	$1,900,000
DNC	$6,288,340.07	$4,550,737.89	$4,756,905.94	$2,500,000.00
RNC	$10,601,168.37	$7,366,486.82	$25,002,762.30	$0
Total Democrats	$17,299,737.76	$10,733,643.87	$75,578,689.41	$3,762,683.65
Total Republicans	$19,055,836.23	$14,356,946.94	$45,436,967.28	$1,900,000

A few things are worth noting out of these numbers. First, the Democratic committees have better than a $28 million net cash-on-hand advantage over their GOP rivals. This works out to a rather remarkable 65 percent advantage just nine months out from election day. Would it be preferable to see the Democratic National Committee do as well as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, both nominally and relatively? No doubt. But these numbers, along with the numbers from presidential and congressional candidates alike, show that overall the Democratic Party as a whole is on extremely strong footing at this point.

Looking a little more narrowly, the DCCC appears to have successfully head faked the National Republican Congressional Committee into spending way too much money on its losing effort in the special election in Illinois 14th congressional district, which was vacated by former House Speaker Denny Hastert. Over the month of February, the NRCC, which already trailed the DCCC by about $30 million in net cash-on-hand, spent 38 percent more than the DCCC while raising 27 percent less. Combined with the hundreds of thousands of dollars the committee believed it had but in fact didn't, the financial situation at the NRCC probably could not get worse.

Finally, one cannot leave out the DSCC, which has better than a net 2-to-1 cash-on-hand advantage over the National Republican Senatorial Committee. With the DSCC on offense in well over half a dozen races -- and perhaps even a dozen or more -- the situation over at the NRSC is fairly dire, as well.

We've known for some time that things have been bad for the Senate GOP. For instance, in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll (.pdf), the American public would prefer electing a Democratic Congress to a Republican one by a whopping 49 percent to 35 percent margin. But the problems for the Republicans are not limited to voter sentiments (as important as they are). A new survey shows that the party itself is not doing what it needs to in order to put itself in a position to succeed in 2008.

Republican Challengers to Incumbent Democrats Are Fewer and Less Funded Than in Recent Past Elections

[...]

CFI's analysis of 2007 and previous odd year fundraising reports by Senate candidates (See Table 1) shows that on average Democrats have strongly outraised Republicans in all three candidate categories: incumbents, challengers and open seats. This is the first time such a trifecta has appeared in this young century's four elections. Particularly notable was the relatively weak showing of Republican challengers to Democratic incumbents. Thus far, only 13 Republicans have begun to challenge the 12 Democratic Senators up for re-election. In the 2002 election -- when the same set of Senate seats were at stake -- 24 Republicans were challenging 14 Democratic incumbents at this time in the election cycle. Furthermore, the 2008 Republican challengers have raised an average of only $223,000, far below their averages of $746,000, $411,000 and $528,000 at the end of the odd-years for the 2006, 2004 and 2002 elections. Meanwhile Democratic incumbents have raised an average of $4,640,000. 1

On the other side, 35 Democrats have embarked so far on challenges to 17 Republican incumbents, significantly more challengers than in any of the previous three Senate elections. They have raised an average of $867,000 in 2007, also significantly more than before, even though the very proliferation of candidacies tends to bring down average receipts. While Republican incumbents on average are as well fortified as they were in 2006 (over $3.4 million in net receipts), some of the better-funded and more competitive Democratic challengers -- as well as competitive Democratic open seat candidates in Colorado and New Mexico -- should gain from the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee's cash advantage over its Republican counterpart, which stood at $ 17.2 million as of January 31, 2008.

We already know that the National Republican Senatorial Committee trails the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee by more than $16 million in net cash-on-hand, and that, what's more, the Republicans must defend twice as many seats as the Democrats and that among those seats there are many, many more vulnerable Republican seats than Democratic ones. But this new report underscores even more profoundly how bad of a position the Senate GOP is in right now.

In short, the Republicans have less candidates, less well funded candidates, and less well funded incumbents than they traditionally have relative to the Democrats, while in turn the Democrats look stronger in each of those areas than they normally do. Overall trends, including fundraising by the party committees, are certainly important, but when one party just isn't fielding viable candidates while the other party is, the potential for a blowout goes way up.

The numbers are in and -- gasp -- for just about the first time this cycle the Republican committees have begun to start catching up with their Democratic rivals. Take a look:

Committee	January Receipts	January Disbursements	January Cash-on-Hand	January Debts & Obligations
DSCC	$3,946,980	$2,874,148	$30,476,123	$1,000,000
NRSC (est.)	$3,500,000	$2,300,000	$13,200,000	$0
DCCC	$3,724,281.85	$3,326,426.10	$35,493,233.64	$1,678,081.49
NRCC	$3,787,558.10	$2,855,662.72	$6,410,150.13	$2,300,000
DNC	$5,760,579.51	$5,702,080.74	$3,019,303.76	$2,500,000.00
RNC	$11,833,196.33	$7,417,582.69	$21,768,080.75	$0
Total Democrats	$13,431,841.36	$11,902,654.84	$68,988,660.40	$5,178,081.49
Total Republicans	$19,120,754.43	$12,573,245.41	$41,378,230.88	$2,300,000

At this point, when debts and obligations are taken into account (because that does matter), the Democratic committees hold roughly a $24.7 million lead over their GOP counterparts. That amounts to an advantage of 63.3 percent -- lower than the figure in the 90s or above seen earlier this cycle, but nonetheless a daunting figure. The Republican committees were able to climb back by over $5 million in January, largely on the shoulders of the Republican National Committee, which is enjoying the largesse of GOP donors who are unimpressed by their presidential candidates but nonetheless want to contribute to their cause.

It's also worth adding this: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton raised roughly $50 million combined in January, compared to the under $16 million brought in by John McCain and Mike Huckabee combined last month. When you tack those figures on to the numbers for the committees above, you get the sense that the Democrats are not in fact slipping relative to the Republicans in terms of fundraising but, rather, Democratic money is just shifting (presumably and hopefully in a temporary manner) from the committees to the candidates.