President Obama will continue to run
for re-election alongside Vice President Joe Biden, the White House
said Thursday, as controversy over racially tinged remarks made by
the vice president continued to boil.
Asked to state definitively that Obama and Biden would be a team
heading into the November elections, White House spokesman Jay Carney
replied, "Yes. And that was settled a long, long time ago."
Biden has come under fire for remarks he made earlier this week
about financial regulation that said Republican Mitt Romney wants to
"unchain Wall Street" and "They're going to put you all back in
chains."
Carney stressed the remarks were a legitimate criticism about a
real campaign issue and not meant to be a racial remarks referencing
slavery to a crowd with many African Americans. Instead he said
Republicans were trying to distract from the real issues of the
campaign because they were losing the debate of ideas.
Republican Senator John McCain, who lost the 2008 presidential
election to Obama, indicated in a Fox News interview that it might be
time for Obama to find a new vice presidential candidate, such as
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
"I think he might be wise to do that, but it's not going to happen
obviously for a whole variety of reasons, including the fact I'm not
sure if I were Hillary Clinton I'd want to be on that team," McCain
said.
Carney joked however that "the one place I would not go for advice
on vice presidential running mates is to Senator McCain," whose vice
presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, came under constant criticism
for her frequent missteps.
