Over the past week there have been rumors circulating that Sen. Barack Obama might seek to drop Sen. Joe Biden as running mate and replace him with Sen. Hillary Clinton. Many agree that these are in fact just rumors, and there is little evidence to support that this is a move Obama is actually considering. However, there have been a few events in the past few weeks that have led people to question whether Biden even supports Obama’s agenda.
According to FOXnews.com, “Barack Obama and Joe Biden stepped out of sync again Tuesday, as the Democratic presidential nominee criticized his running mate for voicing opposition to the government bailout of American International Group early last week.
It was the third off-message moment for the Democratic team in two days. Biden had to ratchet back his own rhetoric Monday after an interview aired in which he called one of his own campaign ads “terrible” and said that he did not support clean coal technology – even though Obama is a big proponent.
The lack of harmony suggests the Obama team, for months a rancor-free institution, is running into the kind of message discipline problems that John McCain’s campaign faced before he started to cut back his interaction with reporters.”
Also adding fuel to the fire, Biden was as quoted as saying, "make no mistake about this, Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America. Let's get that straight. She's a truly close personal friend, she is qualified to be president of the United States of America, she's easily qualified to be vice president of the United States of America and quite frankly it might have been a better pick than me. But she's first rate.”
However, when Bill Clinton appeared on “The View” he claimed that Hillary did not want to be Vice President. When NBC'S Today Show's Matt Lauer asked her about what Bill said, Hillary replied, “you know, Matt, there's no point in going back and, you know, talking about something that didn't happen. I want to keep focused on the future and to talk to those people who are worried about their jobs, their home, affording gas and groceries, you know, thinking that the government has just turned its back on them, making them feel almost invisible.”