Obama in Philly - don't spread the wealth!

The LA Times this morning has a story about a clash between the old and the new approaches to politics. Barack Obama, as we all know, is campaigning on a platform of changing politics. This is clashing with a basic element of machine-style politics in Philly. I went to college just outside Philly, but I wasn't aware of this tradition. It's called "street money," and it's just what it sounds like - local political leaders hand out money to people to walk the streets for their candidates. It's not much $10 here, $20 there, maybe $50 over there. But it adds up.

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.

That's a chunk of change. Clinton is playing the game by the old fashioned rules, and apparently there's a risk that Obama supporters will walk if he doesn't lay out the cash.

There's an unfortunate racial undertone:

A neutral observer, state Rep. Dwight Evans, whose district is in northwest Philadelphia, said there might be a racial subtext to the dispute. Ward leaders, he said, see Obama airing millions of dollars worth of television ads in the city -- money that benefits largely white station owners, feeding resentment. People wonder why Obama isn't sharing the largesse with the largely African American field workers trying to get him elected, Evans said.

As someone who volunteered for Obama for months without getting paid, and never had any intention of getting paid, and will continue to volunteer for Obama through November without any intention of being paid, I'm not in favor of other people getting paid for doing what I did, and intend to do, for free. So I think Obama should refuse to play the game like this.

I think it's also an opportunity for him to demonstrate that he's serious about being willing to disagree with his supporters, and he's serious about changing the role of money in politics. This sounds like a shakedown, pure and simple. I think he could score some major points with this.