I’ve read a lot of stories criticizing Romney’s campaign for ceding the airwaves to the Obama campaign this summer, sitting back while they blanketed swing states with advertising.

I’ve also read a lot of stories about how the Obama campaign has been hemorrhaging cash and spending more than he raises.

Virtually every critique fails to mention a key point of federal campaign finance law that has been driving this: there are two pots of money, primary and general election money.

Someone who donates the maximum to candidate gives $5,000. But that money is divided up into two parts, half for the primary and half for the general election. You see, the maximum is actually just $2,500, but the primary and general are considered two different elections.

Much of those great flipping wads of cash the Romney pulled in last year and in the spring went to pay for his surprisingly expensive and drawn out primary season. When he finally killed off his opponents (at least, for all intents and purposes), he had to conserve what primary election cash he had left to keep his operation running and he couldn’t spend his general election cash until the he was officially nominated at the Republican National Convention.

Meanwhile, Obama found himself with a lot of cash that he had to spend prior to officially becoming the nominee at the Democratic National Convention. So he had to burn through it, which made it look like he was being profligate.