White House: Why Would We Have Wanted to Switch Out Biden?

The White House pushed back against a report in a new book that says President Obama thought about replacing Joe Biden with Hillary Clinton on the 2012 ticket.

According to the forthcoming Double Down by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, authors of 2008’s Game Change, the Obama team even did polling and focus groups to weigh the ramifications of a switch, with Obama’s former chief of staff, William Daley, telling the New York Times they were just doing their “due diligence” at a point when the president was on rocky ground in the campaign.

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“Campaigns test everything. They run everything through the polls and focus groups. Whatever proposition it is, they test it out. What matters here is I know for a fact that President Obama never considered this, never thought about it, never entertained it,” press secretary Jay Carney said on CNN this morning.

“The vice president has been a partner of his from the 2008 campaign on. He’s been an excellent governing partner and an excellent campaign partner, so, you know, again, campaigns test everything. But as the book itself says, this was never considered by the president,” Carney continued. “…Campaigns are filled with emotion and ups and downs and highs and lows. But when it comes to this particular issue, you know, do campaigns test things, the answer is yes, but that doesn’t mean that they’re seriously considered, or, in this case, even entertained by the president.”

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