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VEEPERS CREEPERS! HILL BETTER

Gaffe-prone Joe Biden did it again.

The veep candidate told a crowd of supporters yesterday that Hillary Rodham Clinton “might have been a better pick” as Barack Obama‘s running mate.

The impolitic pol was defending the New York senator after a man in the Nashua, NH, audience told him how pleased he was with Obama’s choice for the No. 2 spot on the Democratic ticket.

“Not because she’s a woman, but because, look at the things she [Clinton] did in the past,” the man said, according to ABC News.

Biden took issue with that.

“Make no mistake about this. Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America,” Biden reportedly said.

He called Clinton “a truly close personal friend.”

“She is qualified to be president of the United States of America. She’s easily qualified to be vice president of the United States of America, and quite frankly, it might have been a better pick than me,” he said.

“But she’s first rate, I mean that sincerely, she’s first rate, so let’s get that straight.”

Republicans wasted little time in pouncing on the admission.

“Biden certainly has a credible viewpoint on this,” Ben Porritt, a McCain spokesman told ABC.

It’s just the latest in a long line of oddball comments and outright screw-ups that have plagued Biden throughout his career.

Last year, when announcing his run for the Oval Office, he described Barack Obama as “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

He claimed his words were taken out of context – and Obama obviously didn’t hold a grudge – but the awkward turn of a phrase dogged him throughout his brief bid for the White House.

Another offensive flub came in 2006, when he said, “You cannot go into a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. Oh, I’m not joking.”

He apparently was trying to make a joke that many Southeast Asians work in coffee shops, but it peeved some members of that community.

His most costly mistake came in 1987, when the Delaware senator launched his first shot at the presidency.

He was caught using a passage in his stump speech from British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock, without attributing it, while at the Iowa State Fair.

He’d cited Kinnock’s words before – and given him his due credit – but for some reason, didn’t that time.

Soon after that scandal, new plagiarism allegations surfaced.

Biden had cheated on a law-school paper by cribbing parts of another work, and he was also caught using parts of a Robert F. Kennedy speech without citation.

He quit the race shortly after the cheating came to light.

jennifer.fermino@nypost.com