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WASHINGTON (AP) Donors gave more than $10 million in March to the committee tasked with electing House Democrats and helped it amass a $40 million fund to fight skepticism that Republicans can be ousted from their majority in November.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee raised $10.3 million in March, putting it atop the fundraising contest among party-directed campaign committees. That sum also outpaced most three-month fundraising tallies released thus far from super PACs, which can accept unlimited donations. Donations to House Democrats' campaign committee are capped at $32,400.

"The DCCC has sustained a blistering fundraising pace this election cycle because Americans are sick and tired of a Republican Congress that shut down our government and that is stacking the deck for the wealthiest while the middle class pays the price," said Rep. Steve Israel of New York, who chairs the Democrats' House campaign arm.

"Americans are hungry for a Congress that will buckle down and focus on creating jobs and strengthening the economy and that's why they're supporting the DCCC at record levels," he said in a statement.

Republicans outnumber Democrats by 34 seats and there are three vacancies in the House. Democrats face a steep climb to reclaim their majority for the first time since tea party-aligned candidates helped the GOP take control of the chamber during the 2010 elections.

That has not stopped donors.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is sitting on one of the largest bank accounts in politics, both among party-linked campaign committees and outside groups. Among party-backed groups that have disclosed their fundraising, the closest rival is the Democrats' Senate committee, sitting on $22 million at the end of March.

The committee's Republican rivals are expected to announce their March fundraising numbers by Sunday's deadline. The National Republican Congressional Committee is not expected to trump the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's report.

House Republicans' committee ended February with almost $24.8 million banked.

House Democrats are optimistic the savings might help their operatives test strategies in multiple districts until they narrow down their options to a handful of races that might provide a pathway albeit a narrow one back to the majority.

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House Democrats' Committee Sitting On $40M Fund

Only four years removed from enjoying majorities in both chambers of Congress and less than two years after re-electing Barack Obama, Democrats are facing a daunting political landscape that threatens their majority in the Senate and could render their lame-duck president even more ineffective than he is now.

According to a Real Clear Politics survey, 61% of voters believe the country is on the wrong track. A Gallup Poll earlier this month showed the presidents approval rating at a discouraging 45%. Both of those numbers give even the most ardent Democratic loyalists reason to question their election hopes this fall. Faced with this less-than-appealing scenario, Democrats have resorted to a number of measures to rally the base - a playbook that might look very familiar to Republicans who went through a similar set of problems in 2006.

While a Republican landslide is by no means a certainty, the parallels between 2006, when the GOP lost 30 seats in the House and six seats in the Senate, and 2014 when Democrats appear in danger of a similar fate, are striking and hold lessons for both parties.

In 2006, the country was mired in a bloody and uncertain campaign in Iraq. A Gallup Poll from November 2006 showed that 55% of Americans felt that the decision to invade was a bad decision, while more than 70% of Americans held an unfavorable view of the country itself.Faced with these headwinds, combined with lingering damage from the controversy surrounding Hurricane Katrina, President George W. Bush watched his approval rating take a beating; as of Election Day 2006, only 38% of voters viewed him favorably, with 56% disapproving of his performance.

In a campaign post-mortem, respected journalist Dan Balz summed it up for The Washington Post, Most polls, however, showed the public far more focused on Iraq than on terrorism and until the very end expressed greater confidence in Democrats to deal with Iraq.

This year, Democrats are faced with a similarly overarching issue: The Affordable Care Act.Obamacare, as it is frequently called, has become the overwhelming issue in this election year, in the same manner that Iraq was in 2006.Despite recent milestones, such as reaching more than seven million enrollees, there is little to suggest that public opinion will change in enough time to save Democrats.The disastrous rollout of the program, coupled with thousands of Americans losing their existing insurance plan, is a potent weapon that Republicans and their allies wont hesitate to use.Eventually, the Affordable Care Act may prove effective, but that will offer little comfort to vulnerable incumbents like Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, who has already seen his vote for the program translated into millions of dollars in ads against him.

The striking similarities between 2006 and 2014 really come to light when analyzing the response of the majority party to great political challenges.In 2006, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist moved a number of measures in an effort to rally the base that had won the White House only two years earlier.From Terry Schiavo, the controversial case about whether to remove life support for the Florida woman, and threatening the nuclear option on judicial nominees, coupled with attacks on Democratic money men like George Soros, Republican majorities in both chambers were looking for a signature issue that could switch the national conversation off of the ongoing morass in Iraq.

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Democrats Playbook Should Look Familiar to the GOP's

DENVER (AP) Colorado Democrats launched an election-year showdown over abortion rights, then delayed their own proposal Tuesday to avoid a public defeat.

The Senate was scheduled to debate a bill to guarantee that state or local policies won't interfere with reproductive decisions such as abortion and contraception. Sponsored by Democrats, the proposal was pitched by backers as a safeguard against future attempts to ship away at reproductive rights.

But with a one-seat majority, Democrats were unable to vote on the measure as planned Tuesday when a Democrat left because he fell ill.

The delay came after more than 500 people rallied against the measure and prayed for senators to reject it.

"It is both extreme and dangerously ambiguous," said Denver Catholic Archbishop Samuel Aquila, speaking through a bullhorn to protesters before the planned Senate vote.

Sponsors of the measure say it won't change current abortion laws, just gird the rights of women from legislative interference. But Aquila and other opponents have said the measure is broadly written and could be interpreted as a challenge to any abortion limits.

"I'm not a big protester," said Denver's Sarah Rodriguez, who brought two children to the Capitol protest. "But I worry about no regulations in this area."

The Senate scheduled the abortion bill to be reconsidered on Wednesday, though it wasn't immediately clear when senators would reconsider it.

The measure is symbolic because the protections could always be changed by a future Legislature. But the measure would draw an election-year party contrast on a measure where Democrats think the public sides with them. The bill's four Democratic sponsors are all from districts Democrats are eager to keep in their column.

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Colorado Democrats delay abortion-rights vote

Mariasol Lota, second from the right, holds an American flag as she is sworn-in as a U.S. citizen...

Republicans are famously divided on immigration reform, but Democrats pretty much unanimously support it. There's a reason for that.

In stark, partisan political terms, continuing the high level of immigration of recent decades, and certainly increasing immigration as envisioned by many reformers, will result in more Democrats winning more elections in coming years.

"The enormous flow of legal immigrants into the country 29.5 million from 1980 to 2012 has remade and continues to remake the nation's electorate in favor of the Democratic Party," concludes a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies, which opposes comprehensive reform proposals like the Senate "Gang of Eight" bill. "As the immigrant population has grown, Republican electoral prospects have dimmed, even after controlling for alternative explanations of GOP performance."

In the report, author James Gimpel, a University of Maryland professor, looks at the immigrants who have come to the United States in recent decades and those likely to come in the future. Through a lot of complicated statistical analysis and close reading of previous studies, he comes to the same conclusion as anyone who has looked through exit polls in the last 30 years: Immigrants tend to vote Democratic.

A 2012 study of 2,900 foreign-born, naturalized immigrants cited in the report showed that about 62 percent identified themselves as Democrats, while 25 percent identified as Republicans, and 13 percent identified as independents. At this moment, according to the report, there are an estimated 8.7 million immigrants in the U.S. who are eligible for naturalization. Not all will become voting citizens, but somewhere between 50 percent and 60 percent will. And it's a sure bet that a majority will identify themselves as Democrats.

Gimpel cites several reasons why future immigration will likely mean more Democrats. The first is that "immigrants, particularly Hispanics and Asians, have policy preferences when it comes to the size and scope of government that are more closely aligned with progressives than with conservatives." Those preferences have expressed themselves in a two-to-one party identification advantage for Democrats in those groups.

Another reason is that the arrival of immigrants, whose ranks include substantial numbers of the poor and unskilled, increases income inequality in the areas they choose to live. "It is from areas of higher income inequality," writes Gimpel, "that we find the most support for a robust government with an expansive regulatory and redistributive role in the economy, among all citizens, not just immigrants." That will likely mean more electoral success for Democrats.

Gimpel found that the partisan impact of immigration "is relatively uniform throughout the country from California to Texas to Florida." If immigrants arrive in large numbers, areas that are already Democratic become more so, while areas that are Republican become more Democratic. That applies to Texas and other red-state strongholds as much as anywhere else.

The political changes immigration has brought to some of the nation's largest counties are striking. Broward County, Fla., was made up of 11.1 percent immigrants in 1980 and is 31.2 percent immigrant today. It was 55.9 percent Republican in 1980 and 32.4 percent today. San Bernardino County, Calif., was 7.7 percent immigrant in 1980, and 21.4 percent today. It was 59.7 percent Republican back then, and is 46.2 percent today. Clark County, Nev., was 7.6 percent immigrant in 1980 and is 21.9 percent today. It was 59.8 percent Republican then and is 42.6 percent today.

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Study finds more immigrants equals more Democrats --- and more losses for GOP

McConnell Urges Senate Democrats to Join With Republicans on a Positive Jobs Agenda
U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor calling on Senate Democrats to work with Republicans on pro-jobs...

By: RepublicanLeader

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McConnell Urges Senate Democrats to Join With Republicans on a Positive Jobs Agenda - Video