Call it a blessing in disguise--or a very smart bit of strategery.

Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal published a story titled "McCain Camp Pegs Total War Chest at $400 Million." The big news, however, had nothing to do with the Republican nominee. According to WSJ reporters Christopher Cooper and Susan Davis--who claimed to have a source close to the campaign--Barack Obama was "expected to report that he had raised little more than $30 million in June." Given that the Illinois senator had raked in $55 million in February and nearly $300 million during the 16-month primary campaign, wrote Cooper and Davis, this total was "underwhelming"--the result, they added, of reluctance among Hillary Clinton's big-money people to fund her former foe and Obama's own "shifts to the center," which had dampened the ardor of his small-donor base.

Here at Stumper headquarters, we joined the choir, comparing the Democrat's cash on hand--his campaign coffers plus the DNC war chest--unfavorably with McCain and the RNC, who, thanks to aggressive joint efforts to raise as much private money as possible before the Arizonan's public financing kicks in, had $102.6 million remaining at the end of June. (That would be more than double Obama's May bank balance.) "The real story of this year's money race," we wrote, "[is that] it's much more competitive than anyone expected." Even when Obama spokesman Dan Pfieffer told reporters that the WSJ number was "way off the mark," we responded with skepticism. "Unless Obama and DNC raked in a combined total in the neighborhood of $70 million," we wrote, noting that the DNC had raised a mere $4 million in May, "the Republicans still have more cash on hand."

Turns out the Democrats did exactly that. This morning, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe announced in an email to supporters that his boss had netted an eye-popping $52 million in June, boosting his available cash balance to $72 million. Meanwhile, DNC spokeswoman Karen Finney revealed that the national party raked in more than $22 million, leaving them with $20 million in the vault. Combined, that gives the Democrats a cash-on-hand total of $92 million--a measly $3 million short of the GOP's current $95 million war chest. In retrospect, this should've seemed inevitable--of course a new opponent would energize Obama's donors, and of course the DNC's haul would grow as Democratic fat-cats finally start to funnel their $28,500 checks through the party. But the WSJ report had the predictable effect of lowering the press's astronomical expectations, so that what once looked obvious now looks surprising. Hence excitable headlines like "Obama Outraises McCain 2-to1"--and another news cycle dominated by the Democrat. It's almost as if David Axelrod was the one whispering "$30 million" in Cooper's ear.

That said, it's worth noting that the basic contours of the cash contest haven't changed: Obama is breaking records and McCain is holding his own. Two numbers tell the entire Obama story: $2 million and $68. The latter is the average size of a contribution to the Obama campaign in June. The amazing thing is that it's about $30 lower than the average contribution in May, April or March. This indicates that the senator attracted a massive number of new $5, $10, $20 donors once the primaries ended--presumably from the ranks of devoted Dems who had (until then) supported Hillary Clinton. Going forward, the sustained growth of this small-sum base is by far Obama's biggest advantage over McCain, who's relying mostly on big-money people to max out and move along.

Same goes for the $2 million--i.e., the meager amount Obama banked last month for the general election. At first, the sum is misleading; you'd think Obama would want to save as much as possible for the final leg of the race.* But because there's a $2,300 cap on what an individual supporters can give in the primaries and a separate $2,300 limit on general-election contributions--not to mention the fact that primary cash "rolls over" into the general-election account--all this means is that very few of Obama's nearly two million donors have reached even that initial $2,300 ceiling (otherwise, more of them would be giving to the fall fund). Ultimately, Obama could raise more than $250 million by Election Day if he continues at this pace--and judging by his expanding pool of small donors, he will.

Still, that doesn't mean McCain is the slouch most pundits expected him to be. Because the senator opted into the public financing system, he'll receive a lump sum of $84.1 million in taxpayer money (or $42 million per month) after the Republican convention, plus about $100 million of assistance from the comparatively rich RNC. Combined with his expected pre-convention tally of $60 million, that comes to about $250 million as well. Which is plenty of dough to spread around. The big benefit for McCain, of course, is that public financing frees him up to focus the final leg of his campaign on voters instead of donors. Obama, meanwhile, must keep posting $50-million months from now through November 4--even detouring from the trail if necessary. In other words, Obama's June was very, very impressive. But anything less would've been unacceptable.