Biden was the chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the Senate for a good long while. He has served very well under this president. He's been involved closely in the military, in drawing down in Afghanistan and Iraq. There has been a partnership there. And what you see as a liability, I think people look at him and think he is the closest thing to an average guy who's been in the White House probably since George W. Bush. I thought his words, taken in the context of an opposition ticket that is running on unshackling Wall Street -- and that is -- Mitt Romney's used that term many times -- the difference between shackles and chains is sort of a distinction without a difference. It's not a new low in political rhetoric. It's another excessive rant. And we're going to see a lot more of this on all sides in this debate...This is Joe being Joe, running against a ticket that doesn't like the Dodd-Frank bill, doesn't like regulations. -Eleanor Clift

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On the campaign trail, Vice President Joe Biden caused a stir when he told a predominantly African-American audience in Danville, Virginia, that quote Romney wants to let the -- he said in the first hundred days he's going to let the big banks once again write their own rules -- unchain Wall Street. They're going to put y'all back in chains. Unquote. Offense at Biden's words was taken. Former Congressman Artur Davis of Alabama was a former co-chair of Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign four years ago. Representative Davis switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in May, three months ago. Davis says Vice President Biden's remarks are an insult to African-Americans. In fact, he says that the words propagated, quote-unquote, racial viciousness. One day later, the vice president tried to smooth out the contretemps, with this explanation quote, the last time these guys unshackled the economy, to use their term, they put the middle class in shackles. Unquote. When President Obama was asked about the matter, he said that what was important was the content of his vice president's message, not the words used to describe the content.