The Wall Street Journal offers this report. Thanks to Steven Sholk for the pointer.
I think the article oversells the benefits of BCRA to Democrats in the short term. The biggest advantage to Democrats touted in the article is BCRA’s “Stand By Your Ad” provision, requiring candidates to personally take responsibility for their broadcast advertisements with a statement of authorization in the ad. The conventional wisdom now is that this provision is limiting the extent of negative campaigning. And this, the WSJ article claims, helps Kerry. The article does not consider, however, whether it will hurt him when he later needs to run ads attacking President Bush.
The article also argues that the end of soft money has opened new avenues for Democrats to raise hard money from a larger base of small donors. But of course this is more difficult for Democrats than raising fewer larger donations. As Nate Persily points out in his forthcoming commentary in the Election Law Journal special symposium issue on the McConnell case, if raising small donations was really advantageous to the Democrats, they would have done more of it while raising soft money was still legal.
In any case, as I understand it there is still a considerable gap between the ability of the Republicans and Democrats to raise hard money donations in the maximum $2000 chunks. Just look at the extraordinary fundraising of President Bush during his primary season running against no opponent. He is sitting on over $130 million to spend in the spring, raised in these $2000 chunks.
None of this is to say that BCRA should never have passed (though I have argued (but see here) that the “Stand By Your Ad” provision is likely unconstitutional given its intent to rein in “negative” campaign speech). It is just to say that the conventional wisdom that BCRA has helped Republicans in the short term still appears correct to me.
UPDATE: Tom Mann responds:

Actually, John Harwood’s piece in the Wall Street Journal makes a very sensible case for Democrats thriving in a McCain-Feingold world, a case largely unaddressed in press coverage. Contrary to Rick and Nate’s assertion, I think Democrats got lazy going after soft dollars in large denominations. The new law forced their hand. The chairman of the DNC has said as much. And Howard Dean has led the way. The Democratic presidential candidates have riased collectively as much money as Bush has. The Democratic party committees are doing very well in their hard-money raising and especially with cash on hand. The national Democratic party committees are likely to invest more in GOTV in this cycle than they did in the 2000 cycle. And on and on.