It was a very good weekend for Sen. Barack Obama. Not only did he sweep through caucus and primary contests in Maine, Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington state and the U.S. Virgin Islands, he took home a Grammy Sunday night and woke up to find his chief rival forced into a major campaign-staff shakeup. Not a bad momentum going into critical upcoming contests in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia.

Obama's recent successes compelled Sen. Hillary Clinton to remove campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, who is Latina, from her post and replace her with longtime adviser Maggie Williams. Wiiliams, a Black woman, was formerly Clinton's chief of staff.

One of the factors that may have led to the campaign-staff shakeup was the lackluster response to recent appearance on the Hallmark Channel where Clinton held "Voices Across America: A National Town Hall." A Sunday column in The New York Times notes Clinton's staff billed the event as "the largest, most interactive town hall in political history" leading up to the Super Tuesday showdown. Speaking from a New York studio, Clinton was poised to field questions from audiences in 21 cities across the country, but the event went largely ignored by most news outlets. Worse yet, the event was interrupted as Clinton spoke mid-sentence so Hallmark could resume its normal broadcasting.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich also noted that racial dynamics seemed to be at play throughout Clinton's Hallmark event. 

"In its carefully calibrated cross section of geographically and demographically cast members--young, old, one gay man, one vet, two union members--African Americans were reduced to also-rans. One black woman, the former TV correspondent Carole Simpson, was given the servile role of the meetings nominal moderator, Ed McMahon to Mrs. Clinton's top banana. Scattered black faces could be seen in the audience. But in the entire televised hour, there was not a single African-American questioner," he wrote. 

Rich doesn't believe this was by happenstance.

"Once black voters met Mr. Obama and stared to gravitate toward him, Bill Clinton and the campaign's other surrogates stopped caring about what African-Americans thought. In an effort to scare off white voters, Mr. Obama was ghettoized as a cocaine user … the black candidate and Jesse Jackson redux."

More Election '08 >>