No, it should not be a surprise that Rudy Giuliani’s campaign staff is all white or that Romney’s has no blacks. But it’s still kind of jarring to see it in graph form. It also shouldn’t be a surprise — and it isn’t — that Barack Obama has the most black people on his staff, despite the media’s best attempts to convince voters that black people hate him.

Lastly, Hillary Clinton deserves the diversity prize for having a very racially balanced staff (although she should work on stealing a few of Richardson’s Native Americans). Her staff demographics are almost perfect. Almost too perfect. Almost…calculated. Nevermind, I’m probably just talking crazy. I doubt Hillary pays that much attention to small details. [TS]

Last night’s Democratic debate in Philadelphia could have been called the “Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President Debate” with Barack Obama and John Edwards (but especially Edwards), realizing that it’s now or never, coming down hard on the frontrunner whenever possible. Which, it seems, was almost every time they had the opportunity to speak.

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Snapshot from Barack Obama’s MTV/Myspace forum yesterday in Iowa, where, according to a recent poll, he’s in a statistical dead heat with Hillary Clinton:

Asked via an IM question if he’d be willing to run on a ticket with Clinton and if he’d bring Republicans into his cabinet, Obama answered the second part first, saying, yes, he would absolutely consider having some Republicans in his Cabinet, noting that “Democrats don’t have a monopoly on wisdom.” As for the Clinton question, Obama said forcefully that it’s too early to say who he might pick as his vice president, but stressed that “I am not running for vice president.” What if the position was offered, Cillizza wondered? “No,” said Obama. “Because, as I said, I’m not running for vice president, I’m running for president of the United States.” Coming more than 20 minutes into the forum, the latter received the first sustained applause of the afternoon.

According to an unscientific study in the New York Post, Hillary Clinton owns Harlem. Especially Harlem women.

More than half of the 96 people questioned by a Post reporter in Harlem this week said they would vote for Clinton, with most preferring her experience as senator and first lady over relative neophyte Obama…

Fifty-seven percent chose Clinton; 19 percent favored Obama.

Clinton was not surprisingly a favorite among females, with 75 percent in her corner.

Most men found the anti-war Obama to be a fresh face.

“A lot of black voters have a problem with the war. And also, Obama is a mentor to us,” said George Danquah, 28.

Bill Clinton, a Harlem favorite who actually has his offices there, and the fact that Hillary is a New York senator has probably made her victory in NYC a foregone conclusion from the beginning. But forget politics, I’m wondering if the people in Harlem acted shockingly civilized during their interviews.

[]

Oprah Winfrey has spent a lot of time and money on Barack Obama, as have Magic Johnson and other supporters on Hillary Clinton, Danny Glover on John Edwards, etc. But do big name celebrity backers really made a difference when it comes time to vote? Will Al Gore’s pending endorsement make any sweeping changes in the polls? Yes and no, experts say. Voters who are big on global warming issues might take a Gore endorsement very seriously. And daytime television watchers and basketball fans might be swayed by Winfrey or Johnson. But many endosements, particularly celebrity ones, don’t really show up in the polls.

Shea weighed the importance of other endorsements from labor unions and celebrities. Labor unions, he said, can offer a campaign volunteers who work night and day knocking on voters’ doors and work in “phone banks” to recruit other volunteers and votes. Labor unions also help a candidate with raising money, which Shea called the “mother’s milk of politics.”

He also discussed the importance of celebrity endorsements. Television talk show host Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of fellow African American Barack Obama, for instance, has not helped lift Obama’s numbers in the public opinion polls for president.

Shea said Winfrey has succeeded in going beyond the “color barrier” in America and is “venerated by lots of people, not just in the African-American community.” Winfrey’s endorsement, he said, translates into more money and exposure for Obama.

I feel slighted. The “experts” in this story didn’t analyze blog endorsements, which obviously have the power to change the tide of an entire election.

[USINFO]

• A black Chicago police officer says that a rule barring the city’s police from associating with convicted criminals discriminates against black officers, since a disproportionate number of black people are convicted with crimes. Hmmm. [CS-T]

• A political activist thinks that removing race from Alabama state documents will combat racism. Why didn’t we think of this before? [WSFA]

• Maybe Pharrell Williams has better things to talk about than Britney Spears? []

• Blacks in the Detroit area find the transition from city to suburbs difficult. [DN]

• Civil Rights activist-turned-Congressman John Lewis just endorsed Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Ouch, Obama. [WP]

Bill Clinton took a not-so-subtle dig at Barack Obama recently, when he compared the level of experience the Illinois senator has today with the level of experience Bill had in 1988 — when he decided not to run for president.

“I was, in terms of experience, was closer to Senator Obama, I suppose, in 1988 when I came within a day of announcing,” Mr. Clinton said in a interview on “Political Capital with Al Hunt” that was scheduled to be broadcast tonight on Bloomberg television and again this weekend.

Mr. Clinton did not run that year, he added, because “I really didn’t think I knew enough, and had served enough and done enough to run.”

The former president quickly noted that he did not mean Mr. Obama should not be pursuing the nomination. But he said that compared to Mr. Obama, who went from the Illinois Legislature to the United States Senate in 2005, Mr. Clinton had far more experience when he finally did run in 1992, as governor of Arkansas for nearly 12 years and as a leader of national policy initiatives.

If only B.O. had a beloved ex-president stumping for him on a daily basis. Michelle is great and all, but she’s no Bill Clinton.

[NYT]

While Barack Obama has raised more funds for the 2008 primaries overall, Hillary Clinton has raised more money than Obama since July, racking up thousands more new donors despite some campaign setbacks.

Perhaps most surprising was that the Clinton campaign reported attracting at least 7,000 more new donors than Mr. Obama, depriving his campaign of the bragging rights that he was more popular with contributors despite Mrs. Clinton’s strong performance in opinion polls and televised debates.

Mrs. Clinton’s fund-raising success came even as some Democratic elected officials continue to have concerns about her electability and the possibility that a Clinton candidacy next November would drag down fellow candidates for Congressional and state races.

The fund-raising also unfolded as her campaign was dealing with a scandal involving a top donor, Norman Hsu, who raised $850,000 for Mrs. Clinton and turned out to be a fugitive from justice.

Is it time for Obama and John Edwards to start skipping important debates to fundraise like those Republicans?

[NYT]

Hillary Clinton has significantly pulled away from Barack Obama in New Hampshire, according to a recent CNN poll that puts Clinton 23 points higher than Obama in the very important early primary state.

The New York Democrat registered 43 percent in the latest poll, 23 points more than Obama, an Illinois senator. In a similar poll conducted in July, only 9 points separated the candidates, with Clinton then at 36 percent and Obama at 27 percent.

“The seven-point change for both candidates is within the poll’s sampling error, but may indicate growing support for Clinton as the primary approaches,” CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said.

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As we saw earlier this week, when Jesse Jackson criticized Barack Obama for being to soft on the Jena Six issue, which presumably means that he declined an invitation to march on Jena hand-in-hand with Jackson and Sharpton, politicians are not in a comfortable position when it comes to this case.

Yesterday, thousands of people, including Mos Def (who I’m kind of over after he acted like such an idiot on Bill Maher) and Bun B (pictured at the protest), descended upon the small town of Jena. Obama and Clinton and Edwards obviously weren’t there. Will it be a problem for them down the road? Not as much as it would be if they had gone.

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