Surprise! McCain is Keeping Up with Obama's Record-Breaking Money Machine.

The real story of this year's money race? It's much more competitive than anyone expected.

Last week, I wrote that while John McCain trails Barack Obama in almost every conceivable measure of public opinion at this (admittedly early) stage of the general election, he currently holds a significant--and given that Obama raised a record-setting $287 million during the Democratic primaries, surprising--advantage over his rival in one of the most important measures of where the contest stands right now: cold, hard cash. This was a function of the fact that McCain had for months been raising money jointly with the Republican National Committee, which always rakes in more moolah than its Democratic counterpart. In May, for example--the most recent numbers then available--McCain and the RNC outraised Obama and the DNC by 50 percent, $45.9 million to $28.1 million. And despite Obama's massive primary haul--and his projected $300 million budget for the general election--the Republican team was actually ahead of its Democratic opponents in available cash by a whopping $38 million. In other words, the much-vaunted Obama cash machine had yet to pay out.

At the time, the comparison wasn't quite fair. While individual donors can contribute no more than $2,300 to the candidates, they can give $28,500 to the parties. In May, Obama and Clinton were still battling for the nomination, which monopolized Democratic donations and left the DNC a mere $4 million. Meanwhile, Republican fat cats were free to funnel their funds to the RNC, secure in the knowledge that it would benefit their (long-settled) nominee. The prediction was that the Obama/ DNC haul for June--the first month when the candidate and the party could raise money as one--would look a lot more like what McCain and Co. was already raking in.

Except that the June numbers just went public--and, in all likelihood, the Dems are still down. As always, Obama's army of 1.7 million donors provided his campaign with a larger individual pot than McCain's: $30 million for Chicago (according to the Wall Street Journal)* vs. $22 million for Crystal City. But thanks to those higher caps on party contributions, the vast majority of McCain's money--that is, another $26 million--went to the RNC. All told, the Republicans now boast a combined cash-on-hand total of $102.6 million, according to McCain campaign manager Rick Davis--$27 million from McCain and the remaining $75.6 million from the RNC and a handful of state victory accounts. That's huge. Team Obama hasn't yet revealed how much it had in the bank at the end of June, nor has the DNC. But to get a sense of how unlikely it is that the Democrats matched the Republicans last month, consider this: if Obama added his pre-June war chest ($47 million) to his June fundraising total (about $30 million) and didn't spend a single dime of that $77 million kitty over the course of the entire month--which, of course, he did--he'd still need 25 million DNC dollars to close the gap. Given that the Washington Post is reporting this morning that Obama's money apparatus has "shown signs of wear in recent weeks, as Internet contributions have slowed and efforts to recruit top donors to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign have been beset by lingering tensions," such a sizable leap seems unrealistic.

Is Obama worried about the money wars? His recent itineraries say yes. Over the past week alone, the Illinois senator has hosted seven joint fundraisers with the DNC--many boasting price tags of $28,500 to $33,100 per plate--and there are another half-dozen on the horizon. In other words, the Web isn't enough anymore. "We have not been able to have much of the senator’s time during the primaries, so we have had to rely more on the Internet,” Obama finance chair Penny Pritzker recently told the New York Times. The reason? Reality. After the convention, McCain will receive $84.1 million in public funds. Obama won't. If the RNC maintains its current cash flow, the Republicans will have about $70 million to spend in September and another $70 million to spend in October. At that point, $30-million months won't cut it for the Dems. Of course, Obama's bound to raise more cash as the race heats up. But as his current schedule suggests, the important thing when it comes to money isn't the records you've shattered in the past--it's how much you have in the bank going forward.

UPDATE, 12:58 p.m.: Obama spokesman Dan Pfieffer responds to the Journal's $30 million number:

“The Wall Street Journal report of our fundraising numbers is way off the mark. It appears that after 18 months, some in the press still haven’t realized that anyone who is talking about numbers doesn’t know what our numbers are.”

Fair point. That said, unless Obama and DNC raked in a combined total in the neighborhood of $70 million, the Republicans still have more cash on hand.