PrintApril 12, 2008
Will Obama pay for play in Philly voting?
Will Barack Obama lose critical votes in Philadelphia because his campaign refuses to spread out street money? That's the question raised by a Los Angeles Times story by Peter Nicholas:
Flush with payments from well-funded campaigns, the ward leaders and Democratic Party bosses typically spread out the cash in the days before the election, handing $10, $20 and $50 bills to the foot soldiers and loyalists who make up the party's workforce.
It is all legal -- but Obama's people are telling the local bosses he won't pay.
It is admirable that Obama refuses to play along with sordid Democrat traditions like this. I just wonder if the campaign will follow through, or in the face of a possible Hillary surge in the wake of his recorded disdain for God-loving gun-owning small town Pennsyvanians, possible spend some of the cash raised on billionaire's row in San Francisco. The requisite money is almost just an accounting error in his nine figure haul:
Carol Ann Campbell, a ward leader and Democratic superdelegate who supports Obama, estimated that the amount of street money Obama would need to lay out for election day is $400,000 to $500,000.
"This is a machine city, and ward leaders have to pay their committee people," Campbell said. "Barack Obama's campaign doesn't pay workers, and I guarantee you if they don't put up some money for those street workers, those leaders will most likely take Clinton money. It won't stop him from winning Philadelphia, but he won't come out with the numbers that he needs" to win the state.
Having staked out the moral high ground, Obama will now look very bad if he reverses himself. But he does not want to add to Hillary's evidence by allowing her to pick up votes in what he expects to be his stronghold. Once again, Obama demonstrates that he is a novice at national politics, just as he is at diplomacy, where he foolishly promised to meet with the world's worst dictators, and with the OIC (there is some overlap between the two groups) to hear their complaints about the Great Satan. Sounds good when you are in front of a crowd of affluent "progressives", but when you think about it in the real world context, there are downsides aplenty.
