The discussion about what, exactly, we can expect from Senator Obama’s fund-raising today took some more interesting twists. See Hot Air, The Next Right, and myself for background: the short version is that Obama’s speed in declaring his fund-raising numbers seems inversely linked to how badly he did any given month, and he’s already a little late for doing it for June.

Now we have two pieces of information to add to the mix.

The first is from Reuters, and I’m slightly surprised that it hasn’t gotten more play:

DAYTON, Ohio (Reuters) – Barack Obama raised well over $30 million in June, a top aide indicated on Friday, outpacing Republican rival John McCain again as the Democratic White House hopeful’s fundraising picked up after a lull in May.

[snip]

Asked about the newspaper’s figure, Obama’s communications director, Robert Gibbs, said it was “way off the mark.”

Asked if he meant it was more, he said he did. The campaign probably would not issue the June figure until close to the filing deadline of July 20, Gibbs added.

Interesting. Not incompatible to one of the scenarios I estimated above – 38-39 million, which would be ‘well’ above 30 million while still being a disaster to the Obama campaign, which unambiguously needs to get 50 million a month from now on – but interesting. It’s also coming from a different guy (a pretty funny in retrospect post about him can be found here) than the one who originally sent around the “way off the mark” response, which can mean anything at all, I suppose. I guess we’ll see about the raw numbers, huh?

Not that the raw numbers are anywhere near the full story here – and for that, we go to Sean Hackbarth, who has his own interesting bit of information for us:

Obama Campaign Puts the Brakes on NASCAR Sponsorship

JOLIET, Ill. — NASCAR’s BAM Racing team has presented Barack Obama’s presidential campaign with a potential sponsorship deal in the Sprint Cup series later this year, but it doesn’t look like an Obama car will be burning rubber on the track anytime soon.

BAM team spokesman Rhett Vandiver told The Associated Press on Friday that the team made a sponsorship proposal to the Democratic presidential hopeful’s campaign, and has made similar proposals to the campaign of Republican John McCain and at least one third-party candidate.

Late Friday, the Obama campaign said there would be no sponsorship.

Sean’s being a bit too fair when he suggests that this may have just been a “trial balloon.” Obama doesn’t want to do better among NASCAR dads; he needs to do better. I don’t care what the polls may be telling you at this point in time: you do not win Presidential elections with solely urban white liberals and African-Americans*, particularly when it’s child’s play for the opposition to identify a candidate with the former. That means that successful candidates appeal to the middle and working class – and while merely sponsoring a NASCAR car isn’t a magic bullet, it’s an excellent start. One that would probably accomplish more than, say, a nighttime stadium acceptance rally that already has people muttering the word “Nuremberg” (assuming that the hardcore demonstrators don’t crash the thing with a little direct action, of course).

Then again, Denver probably isn’t demanding cash in advance. Which is my polite way of saying that I look forward with some interest to what Obama *spent *last month. Given his inability to break out from Generic Democrat vs. Generic Republican land, it could be very, very, entertaining…

Moe Lane

*Those wanting to dispute this to me should contemplate that the Obama campaign agrees with me, given how they’ve been studiously trying to backtrack on liberal opinion almost down the line.

And when it comes to the last holdout, well, the campaign season is young.