Party boss weighed replacing Clinton

WASHINGTON — The former head of the Democratic National Committee says she considered initiating an effort to replace Hillary Clinton as the party’s presidential nominee with then-Vice President Joe Biden.

Donna Brazile makes the revelation in a memoir being released Tuesday, according to the Washington Post, which obtained an advance copy of the book.

Brazile writes that she considered initiating Clinton’s removal after she collapsed while leaving a Sept. 11 memorial service in New York City last year. Clinton later acknowledged she was suffering from pneumonia. But Brazile says the larger issue was that her campaign was “anemic” and had taken on “the odor of failure.”

After considering a dozen combinations to replace Clinton and her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine from Virginia, Brazile writes that she settled on Biden and Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey as those with the best chance of defeating Donald Trump.

Ultimately, the former DNC head says, “I thought of Hillary, and all the women in the country who were so proud of and excited about her. I could not do this to them.”

It was unclear whether Biden even discussed the idea with Brazile. She writes that on Sept. 12, 2016, the day after Clinton collapsed, she got a call from Biden’s chief of staff saying the vice president wanted to speak with her and her thought at the time was “Gee, I wonder what he wanted to talk to me about?”

As for Brazile’s powers to determine the party’s candidate, she writes that as party chair she would oversee the process of replacing a nominee who became disabled. But the rules do not give that power solely to the chair of the party. That decision is ultimately made by the DNC after consultation with Democratic leaders in Congress and Democratic governors.