The Political Rumor Mill Grinds Out a Hillary as VP Hypothesis

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Thanks to an ill-timed gaffe by Vice President Joe Biden and a presidential schedule today which features back-to-back meetings with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Biden, the stars have aligned and given us the hot rumor of the day: that Obama will give Biden the axe, and anoint dancing, texting, beer-drinking Hillary Clinton his VP. "Is Today the Day?" asks Bill Kristol and the folks at The Weekly Standard pointing to President's 10:15 a.m. meeting with Biden, his 10:45 a.m. meeting with Clinton, and another 12:30 p.m. meeting with Biden. Basically they're insinuating that it would take a little under two hours to convince Clinton to take the job, and that the president would actually put a history-making move like this on the docket for this morning. Whew. That was fun, right? (It's politics, fun is totally relative.) 

Now, we hate to rain on this sexy politics story, but considering that Kristol, who runs The Weekly Standard, has a bit of a track record of predictions that haven't come true (back in 2006 he predicted that Clinton would be the nominee and Obama didn't have a chance; in 2007 he wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post championing the Bush tax cuts, and we know how those turned out; in 2009 he... you know what, he's made so many bad predictions we've even made a timeline for his terrible predictions), please take this rumor with heaping tablespoons of salt. 

But the other reason we're talking about this is because of Biden's tacky "chains" remark. As the current VP told the crowd at a gathering in Danville, Virgina, on Tuesday, "They’re [Romney, Republicans] going to put y’all back in chains." This led to Republican backlash and a Fox News interview with Senator John McCain (remember when he tapped Sen. Rob Portman as Romney's VP pick?) who said yesterday, of a Hillary VP pick: "I think it might be wise to do that but it’s not going to happen obviously, for a whole variety of reasons." He added, "I’m not sure if I were Hillary Clinton I would want to be on that team ... I think her ambitions frankly are for 2016 and I’m not sure that would enhance that likelihood." Maybe McCain saying no, considering his future-predicting record (Sarah Palin joke here?), actually means yes when it comes to Hillary?

Of course, having Hillary on the ballot would be a crazy, sexy, bold, game-changing (har har) move. And, hypothetically speaking, smart. After all, per Time magazine, she's enjoying all-time highs in favorability and approval. That's almost enough to allow us to ignore frivolous things like Hillary Clinton repeatedly saying she doesn't want any part of the presidency in 2016, publicly stating that she wants to retire, and Obama denying the replacement rumors.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.