I'm sure you've already seen Politico's fairly comprehensive tabulation of federal campaign spending. It finds that Democrats have a substantial advantage, even when you include all of the outside groups' spending. The only surprise is that this surprises anyone. Unfortunately, the entire political conversation on political spending is being held hostage by White House propaganda.

That doesn't apply just to the outside groups, but to the usual players as well. For all the talk about Wall Street groups backing Republicans, Wall Street PACs are narrowly favoring the party that bailed them out, as are the PACs of the insurance industry, HMOs and drug companies.

Kudos to Politico for doing the math. Their reporter, Jeanne Cummings, appeared on MSNBC this afternoon to discuss the issue: