Political Radar: Biden Laughs About Blunder

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Biden Laughs About Blunder

January 31, 2007 9:15 PM

ABC News' Mark Halperin Reports:

There are some good bits of comedy, but no real news in Sen. Biden's colloquy with Jon Stewart about his controversial New York Observer remarks on the "Daily Show" scheduled to air this evening at 11:00 pm ET.

Stewart asked Biden about his negative comments from the New York Observer about Sens. Clinton, Edwards, and Obama.

Biden mostly joked his way through his explanations which were almost identical to those he gave on a conference call with reporters earlier today.

He tried to soften his critiques of the Iraq proposals of Clinton and Edwards, by saying of Clinton's plan, "I think it is a very bad idea," and calling Edwards' plan "unworkable."

Stewart was obviously most interested in what Biden said about Obama. First he read Biden his statement from yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer that he had learned that "words matter." Then, Stewart read him his quotes about Obama. Biden said, "I spoke to Barack today," and he also revealed that he called both Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Stewart then jokingly asked him if he called Michael Jordan.

After a little more joking, Biden got serious and said, "I was attempting to be complimentary." Rather than saying 'clean,' Biden said "I should have said fresh."

He the extolled Obama's political strength using language similar to what he used this afternoon on the phone.

Stewart then did an elaborate bit of business in which he graphically showed the Biden quote about Obama and demonstrated how the insertion of punctuation marks at various places could change the meaning and make it uncontroversial.

Much of the interview was about Iraq and about Biden's plan to partition the country into three sections.