[UPDATE below the fold.] OK, maybe Biden really doesn’t keep up with his own campaign’s positions, emails, videos, and just about everything else. It sounds insane, but then, so did this:

“We’re not supporting ‘clean coal.’ Guess what. China’s building two every week. Two dirty coal plants. And it’s polluting the United States. It’s causing people to die. … China is burning three hundred years of bad coal unless we figure out how to clean their coal up. Because it’s going to ruin your lungs and there’s nothing we can do about it. No coal plants here in America. Build them, if they’re going to build them over there make ‘em clean because they’re killing you.”

As the Weekly Standard notes (transcript above via them, too), Obama’s all about Clean Coal, mostly because he’d like to win Pennsylvania. It remains to be seen whether Biden does, too.

Moe Lane

[UPDATE]: If I had any sympathy for anybody in the Obama campaign, it’d be reserved for David Wade, who clearly got stuck with “clean up after Joe Biden duty” today.

And yes, McCain’s picked up on this already:

Barack Obama is actually on record supporting the expansion of such technologies, but Biden’s words are prompting Republicans to lick their lips about the potential resonance of the issue in key coal states such as Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Colorado.

To drive the issue, they’re circulating the above video, will hold a conference call later today with a coalition of elected officials, coal miners and executives from such states, stage local media events on the matter later in the week and likely cut an ad targeted at relevant markets.

It’s also part of his stump speech, at least for today. Thank you, Joe Biden!