Who knew the right loved Hillary so much? Conservative bloggers are having a hard time figuring out which they are enjoying more — Vice President Joe Biden’s latest gaffes or speculation that Hillary Clinton could replace him on the ticket. 
 
 “He’s in North Carolina when he’s in Virginia. He thinks Paul Ryan is governor of one of the states numbered 51 through 57. He’s not even clear in which century he’s living. He’s Joe Biden and he’s one heartbeat away from the Presidency. Or will he be for long?” Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey mused. “The week’s misadventures for Sheriff Joe have some wondering whether he’s medically qualified for the job, and speculation rising anew that the possessor of that hygienic heartbeat may want to find someone else to square off against Paul Ryan in the October debates.” 
 
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 (Also on POLITICO: Ryan: Biden is 'desperate') 
 
 Choosing Clinton, Morrissey continued, “might be exactly what Obama needs.” But Morrissey doesn’t think it’ll happen since former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin upped the ante and told Fox News she thinks Biden should be canned. “Obama wouldn’t dare take her advice,” he wrote. 
 
 “Biden’s erratic statements certainly should make Team Obama nervous,” wrote the National Review’s John Fund. “I’ve no doubt that some Democratic strategists would love for Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to swap jobs and bolster the Democratic ticket with a little Clinton magic. But there’s no evidence that Hillary would take that deal. If she wants to run, she is already the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic nomination and would gain no advantage by being yoked to Obama, her old adversary, for the next three months if they lost or the next four years if they won.” 
 
 PJ Media’s Roger Kimball speculated that Democrats are growing weary of Biden, especially this week. “Their man has clearly let them down and the inadvertent comedy of Joe Biden screaming that Republicans are going to ‘put y’all back in chains’ isn’t helping.” 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: McCain: Would be 'wise' to can Biden) 
 
 The Chicago Tribune’s John Kass wrote, “Is it too late for President Barack Obama to pick up the phone, call Hillary Rodham Clinton and dump Vice President Joe Biden for playing the race card against Republican Mitt Romney? Yep. It’s probably too late, y’all. For years, Biden has suffered from a terrible affliction called Verpes (pronounced Vur-peez), the slang name for verbal herpes, from the Latin herpius verbulus. It comes from repeatedly taking your shoe with your foot still inside it and shoving it all the way into your mouth so that it smacks that little punching bag thing back there called a uvula.” ||||| The Obama campaign told the Hill on Tuesday that it “is confident Vice President Biden will be an effective foil” for Paul Ryan despite Biden’s latest gaffe. I’m not so sure, and neither are some Democrats. 
 
 Biden’s rhetorical belly-flop yesterday was a doozy. He first told a largely black audience in Danville, Va., that he hoped they could help Obama win North Carolina. He followed that up with the claim that Mitt Romney wanted to “unchain Wall Street.” He then switched to a comic down-home accent and bellowed, “They’re gonna put y’all back in chains!” 
 
 Willie Geist, a co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, was blunt: “If Paul Ryan, the Republican candidate, said that to an African-American audience, there would be calls this morning for him to get out of the race, for Mitt Romney to withdraw from the race. There’s a double standard.” 
 
 But there has been a double standard for Joe Biden for decades, and almost every reporter in Washington knows it. Last night, a frustrated Rudy Giuliani acknowledged it on CNBC. “I’ve never seen a vice president that has made as many mistakes, said as many stupid things,” he told Larry Kudlow. “I mean, there’s a real fear if, God forbid, he ever had to be entrusted with the presidency, whether he really has the mental capacity to handle it. I mean, this guy just isn’t bright. He’s never been bright. He isn’t bright. And people think, ‘Well, he just talks a little too much.’ Actually, he’s just not very smart.” 
 
 Biden has been very lucky that the national media have largely given him a pass until now. American history for the last half-century has been replete with Republicans who have been portrayed by the elite media as dim or addled — from Dwight Eisenhower to Gerald Ford to Ronald Reagan and Dan Quayle to, of course, George W. Bush and Sarah Palin. No Democrat with comparable national stature has been saddled with a similar reputation. The media have tended to explain away Biden’s strange statements and unforced errors by saying, “Oh, well. That’s just Joe, you know.” Or they casually admit, “Well, he just talks a bit too much,” and then move on. 
 
 In the middle of a hotly contested presidential campaign, that may now be changing. In the Washington Post yesterday, Alexandra Petri discussed “the trouble with Joe” and took the VP to task for “periodically alarming outbursts” that are unbecoming of the second-highest office in the land. “He inspires the sort of discomfort one feels upon introducing one’s fiancé to Grandpa after he has had a Scotch too many,” Petri scolded. “His cringe-inducing gaffes . . . inspire less anger than embarrassment.” A New York publishing source told me that “Biden is now seen as a Catholic Sam Goldwyn, and that’s not a good place to be.” Sam Goldwyn was the legendary Hollywood producer who was known for malapropisms (“A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on”). 
 
 The White House has to worry that for the next 82 days Joe Biden will be under tremendous scrutiny — especially given the fact that Paul Ryan has become such a media-attention magnet. Everyone is anticipating the October 11 debate between Biden and Ryan. Biden’s penchant for off-the-cuff remarks doesn’t inspire confidence that he won’t unintentionally blurt something out when facing Ryan. For example, he embarrassed the Obama administration recently by prematurely revealing he was “comfortable” with gay marriage — forcing his boss to suddenly endorse gay marriage on a timetable not of his choosing. 
 
 Biden’s erratic statements certainly should make Team Obama nervous. I’ve no doubt that some Democratic strategists would love for Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to swap jobs and bolster the Democratic ticket with a little Clinton magic. But there’s no evidence that Hillary would take that deal. If she wants to run, she is already the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic nomination and would gain no advantage by being yoked to Obama, her old adversary, for the next three months if they lost or the next four years if they won. 
 
 So Democrats are stuck with Old Joe, who will turn 70 this November. It’s said that few people vote for a presidential ticket based on who is filling the No. 2 slot. But some do, and they may matter in a very close race. It’s likely that by the time this campaign ends, a lot of people will be more nervous about Joe Biden being a heartbeat away from the presidency than about Paul Ryan. 
 
 — John Fund is national-affairs columnist for NRO and a co-author of the newly released Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk (Encounter Books).
– Joe Biden's "put y'all back in chains" comment has sparked plenty of calls—from Republicans including John McCain and Sarah Palin—for President Obama to boot Biden off the ticket and replace him with Hillary Clinton. But the White House insists there will be no such switcheroo, and spokesman Jay Carney couldn't resist a dig at McCain yesterday, reports Mediaite. "I have great admiration for and great respect for and a long relationship with Sen. John McCain, but one place I would not go to for advice for vice presidential running mates is to Sen. McCain," he said in response to a question from a Fox correspondent. But Obama-Clinton speculation continues at many conservative blogs and a growing number of liberal ones, Politico notes. Many pundits agree that Clinton would give the ticket a boost, but doubt she'd be interested in replacing Biden. "If she wants to run, she is already the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic nomination and would gain no advantage by being yoked to Obama, her old adversary, for the next three months if they lost or the next four years if they won," writes John Fund at the National Review.