The Romney campaign is calling Joe Biden’s comment about the middle class being “buried for the past four years” a gaffe, and it does fit the criteria of “accidental-honesty.” There’s no doubt the middle class has been hit hard under the current administration, which is why the Obama campaign is having such a difficult time cleaning up after Biden’s comment. They can’t claim Biden is wrong (or they’ll seem out of touch), but they obviously can’t acknowledge he’s right.

The solution? Agree with Biden’s assessment that the middle class has been buried for the past four years, but blame it all on Bush:

“As the Vice President has been saying all year and again in his remarks today, the middle class was punished by the failed Bush policies that crashed our economy – and a vote for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan is a return to those failed policies,” an Obama campaign official said. “With more than five million private-sector jobs created since 2010, the Vice President and President Obama will continue to help the middle class recover and move the nation forward.”

No surprise, Biden’s comment is barely registering with the mainstream press, except as evidence of how desperate the Romney campaign must be to make an issue out of it. After the media let Biden slide for his blatant racial pandering, what else would we expect? If Paul Ryan had made a similar allusion to slavery, the press would still be talking about it today (if he hadn’t been forced to drop out of the race, that is). Instead, Biden gets front-page investigations into whether he’s a “sex symbol.” Because, you know, it’s not like there’s any serious news to cover this week.