Barack Hussein Obama appears to be a nice enough fellow, although, having leaped onto the national political stage, courtesy of the most corrupt big city political machine in America, one wonders what illegal and unethical shenanigans he’s had to either ignore or wink at that would make the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons sound like children’s fairy tales.

Obama travels about the country, inspiring crowds of tweed-jacket-and-tennis-shoe liberals, nanny-state blacks, self-described campus “intellectuals,” starry-eyed political “groupies,” and Code Pink radicals with his message of “hope” and “change.” It’s mostly hollow rhetoric, but as the campaign moves ever closer to the April 22 Pennsylvania primary it should become clear to even his most ardent admirers that the sheen has worn off their candidate and that he must now confront the dark underbelly of Democratic Party politics.

It all started on Sunday, April 6, as Obama took a one-day hiatus from the coal and steel towns of rural Pennsylvania to do a bit of fundraising on San Francisco’s Gold Coast (minimum price of admission: $2,300 per person). As Obama and his well-heeled supporters sipped Champagne and nibbled on Beluga caviar and smoked salmon, he spoke of the economic hardships created by job-flight in the Rust Belt states and the bitterness that is left behind (the billionaires yawned, their wives teared-up, momentarily).

The Huffington Post quoted him as saying, “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And it’s not surprising that then they get bitter, they cling to guns, or religion, or antipathy to people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment, as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Pennsylvanians are proud, hard-working people and that is not the way they see themselves. His opponent immediately pounced on the remark. She told a Philadelphia audience, “Pennsylvania doesn't need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, your families.”

This was not good news for Obama. His condescending remark to the idle rich on Billionaire’s Row in San Francisco will cost him dearly among Rust Belt voters in Pennsylvania… votes that he will have to make up in the black communities of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. But that vote, too, is in serious danger of erosion.

The April 11, 2008 edition of the Los Angeles Times carried a story by Peter Nicholas, titled, “Barack Obama may lose support in Philadelphia over ‘street money.’ ” According to the Times, Obama appears to be balking at the notion of paying “street money” in Philadelphia, even though he, himself, has been a major beneficiary of it in Chicago in two campaigns for the Illinois State Senate and one campaign for the U.S. Senate. “Street money” is the “mother’s milk” of politics in every big city in America run by powerful Democratic machines.

Here’s an example of how it works. In every major city where the urban area is bisected or trisected by state lines, Democratic political machines run very sophisticated, but fraudulent, get-out-the-vote operations. In Philadelphia, for example, ward leaders distribute register-by-mail postcards to local residents. The cards are stamped and pre-addressed and each contains the address of a vacant lot or a boarded-up house in neighboring Camden, NJ or Wilmington, DE. The voter simply prints his/her name on the card, signs it, and drops it in the nearest mailbox.

On Election Day, after voting in their home precincts (and perhaps one or two other Philadelphia precincts), voters are picked up in buses and mini-vans and driven across the Delaware River to Camden. After voting in New Jersey elections, they’re driven south to the Commodore Barry Bridge and back across the Delaware to Wilmington. Then, when they’ve voted in Delaware, they’re driven back to Philadelphia where each voter is given $20 or $25 for their time and effort. The money they are paid is called “street money” in Democratic circles.

In 2005, New Jersey Republicans released the results of a study which showed that some 170,000 New Jersey residents were registered to vote in two or more states. Of these, some 6,500 voted in two or more states in the 2004 General Election.

Now, in the 2008 Democratic primary, the Obama campaign is apparently resisting demands for “street money” by Philadelphia Democrats. According to the Times, “That sets up a cultural clash, pitting a candidate who promises to transform American politics against the realities of a local political system important to his presidential hopes…”

The Times quotes a Philadelphia ward leader, Carol Ann Campbell, an Obama super-delegate, who estimates that Obama would need to lay out somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 to provide Philadelphia ward leaders with the cash they will need to turn out the Obama vote. According to Campbell, she could “not in good conscience” (emphasis added) ask people to work for Obama for free.

Barack Obama promises “hope” and “change.” Well, it’s clear that Democrat ward leaders in Philadelphia are “hoping” for a little “change,” as well… but not the kind of “change” that Obama has in mind. They’re looking for big bucks. So, in the weeks ahead, the Federal Election Commission… and hopefully the mainstream media… will be watching to see if Obama spends some of that San Francisco Champagne and caviar money in Philadelphia. If he writes some big checks in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in the days ahead we’ll know that he has sold his soul one more time.

We’re not sure if Obama is a good dancer, or not, but it appears that he’s about to get a lesson in the “Pennsylvania two-step.” That’s one step forward, and two steps back.