Obama’s campaign tested replacing Biden

President Obama’s 2012 campaign tested replacing Vice President Biden with Hillary Clinton, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Friday in an interview.

Carney emphasized that Obama “never thought” about replacing Biden with Clinton, and that the idea was not “seriously” considered by the campaign.

But he made it clear that the idea was discussed during what he described as the highs and lows of a presidential campaign.

“Campaigns are filled with emotion and ups and downs and highs and lows,” Carney said on CNN’s “New Day.”

“When it comes to this particular issue: Do campaigns test things? The answer is yes,” he continued. “But that doesn’t mean they were seriously considered or in this case even entertained by the president.”

The issue is coming up because of the new book Double Down, which will be published next week and reports that former Chief of Staff William Daley requested polling on the impact of a swap amid Obama’s flailing approval rating. 

Carney said that the book itself notes it was not seriously considered.

“What matters here is I know for a fact that President Obama never considered this, never thought about it, never entertained it,” he said.

“The vice president has been a partner of his from the 2008 campaign. He has been an excellent governing partner and an excellent campaign partner.”

“As the book itself says, this was never considered by the president,” Carney added. 

A former senior adviser to Obama, David Plouffe, also took to Twitter on Thursday night to assert there was “never any — any — consideration” of the switch by Obama. He added that it was not considered by “most of us” on the campaign. 

In an interview with The Times, Daley said: “You have to remember, at this point the president was in awful shape, so we were like, ‘Holy Christ, what do we do?’ ”

Another former senior adviser, David Axelrod, tweeted that a vice president swap was “never in play.” He called Biden a loyal friend and wise councelsor.

VP swap never in play. Biden’s taken on many tough assignments. He’s been loyal friend and wise counselor. POTUS lucky to have him.

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) November 1, 2013