David Axelrod, former adviser to President Barack Obama, downplayed a story that the re-election campaign considered dumping Vice President Joe Biden from the ticket in favor of Hillary Clinton, but ended up setting a punchline for journalist Bob Woodward.
Both appeared in the roundtable discussion Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Axelrod responded to reports in the book
"Double Down: Game Change 2012" that the Obama campaign
thought about bringing in then-Secretary of State Clinton as the No. 2 on ticket. It would have looked "disloyal and desperate," Axelrod said.
"You took it seriously enough to poll it though," the BBC's Katty Kay, also on the panel, responded.
"Katty, let me tell you, we tested everything, and that was our job," Axelrod said.
"Everything but Obamacare," Woodward quipped, a reference to the website's failure to function properly more than a month after its debut. The website failed hundreds of tests, some just days
before the Oct. 1 launch.
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