Among the shocking revelations from former Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile’s new book is this tidbit: After Hillary Clinton took a header at a September 11 memorial event last year, she seriously considered replacing her with another candidate. Concerned that Hillary’s campaign reeked from the “odor of failure” and that the woman at the top of the ticket might be too frail of health to finish out the election, Brazile looked at other candidates who might step in and finish the race.
In the book, Brazile writes that she brainstormed more than a dozen combinations of Democrats who might be able to step in and replace Clinton and running mate Tim Kaine. She ultimately settled on Vice President Joe Biden with running mate Sen. Cory Booker as the team most likely to be able to defeat Donald Trump in November. After coming up with the replacement squad, however, Brazile says she was unable to pull the trigger.
“I thought of Hillary,” she writes, “and all the women in the country who were so proud of and excited about her. I could not do this to them.”
Brazile’s explosive revelations brought a sharp rebuke from more than 100 former Clinton campaign aides, who responded with an open letter saying they “do not recognize the campaign she portrays in the book.”
“We were shocked to learn the news that Donna Brazile actively considered overturning the will of the Democratic voters by attempting to replace Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine as the Democratic Presidential and Vice Presidential nominees,” the letter states. “It is particularly troubling and puzzling that she would seemingly buy into false Russian-fueled propaganda, spread by both the Russians and our opponent, about our candidate’s health.”
Well, we feel awkward defending an abject fool like Donna Brazile, but it wasn’t Vladimir Putin’s troll armies that put Hillary Clinton on the sidewalk at that 9/11 event; she did that herself by trying to lie about her pneumonia. And there were grave and serious concerns about her health at that time, and they certainly didn’t come from the Russians. This letter reeks of the same arrogant blind-spots that cost Hillary the election in the first place. Astute readers will recall that all the talk about the primaries being rigged was supposed to be Russian-fueled propaganda as well.
So all that said, what would have happened if Brazile had followed through on her instincts and replaced Hillary Clinton with Joe Biden? Could Biden have pulled home the victory? Could he have defeated Trump?
We’ll never know, but we strongly doubt it. Biden isn’t as popular as his fans make him out to be, and one of Clinton’s most glaring weaknesses was that she was unable to distinguish what her presidency would bring to the table other than a “third Obama term.” If anything, that would have been an even greater liability for Biden. Launching a campaign from scratch less than two months out from the vote…that probably wouldn’t have turned out well, either.
As it happens, we’re glad that it didn’t play out that way because we’re quite happy with the way things turned out. But hey, if Biden wants his shot, 2020 is coming up quick. Good luck, buddy. Any Democrat running under these conditions is going to need it.
