If money is the mother's milk of politics, Barack Obama won't be going thirsty any time soon. His $32.5 million Q2 haul is surprising not only in terms of its size but also its depth: 158,000 individuals contributed last quarter, bringing the total number of contributors for the first half of the year to more than 250,000.

The ability to raise money is no guarantee of success. Phil Gramm and Howard Dean are proof of that. But Obama seems different - at least for the moment.

As David Primo, a political science professor at the University of Rochester in New York says in this Bloomberg piece:

"Money doesn't determine election outcomes, but at this stage it is a rough proxy for support from Democratic elites and true believers. They appear to be putting their money with Obama, both in number of donations and in absolute dollars.''

As I mentioned in my Sun-Times column last month, the worst news for Obama right now - which isn't terribly distressing - is that he's flat lined in the national and state polls.

(Incidentally, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe called the polls at this point in the race "all but meaningless," which is absolutely true - though he wouldn't be making that argument if Obama had overtaken Hillary.)

Nevertheless, as you can see from the chart below, Obama's been bumping around in the mid-to-low twenties in the RCP Average since he officially entered the race in February:

Focusing on the last month in particular, Obama ticked down slightly in June (less than 1%) while Clinton ticked up about two and half points in the national polls on average.

Again, this isn't terribly significant, except for the fact that with each new poll that's been released (15 in June alone) there's been a corresponding crush of media stories talking about Clinton's expanding lead and reinforcing the various pre-packaged story lines about the inevitability of her winning the nomination.

But over that same period - the month of June - compare the trend lines of the two candidates in the political futures markets. First Hillary:

Now Obama:

The dramatic moves over the last couple days can be attributed to news of Obama's fundraising prowess, but even before that he was trending upward while Hillary was trending down, the exact opposite of what we've been seeing in the national polls.

If you factor in Obama's other asset - his high favorable rating among Democrats and Independents - with his new display of money muscle, the picture that emerges is that Obama is in a much stronger position, and Clinton in a much weaker one, than the polls suggest.