Former Democratic National Committee chair considered parachuting Joe Biden in, as Clinton campaign had ‘odor of failure’

The former Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile said on Sunday critics including nearly 100 members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign team could “go to hell”, and insisted she would tell her story of the 2016 election.

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Brazile’s new book, Hacks, has sparked controversy over its claim that the primary was weighted in favour of Clinton over Bernie Sanders and a passage in which she says she considered replacing Clinton with Joe Biden.

Jesse Ferguson, a former Clinton spokesman, posted an open letter on Medium on Saturday in which former aides said they 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”.

Brazile writes that the possible switch – with the New Jersey senator Cory Booker as Biden’s running mate – was considered after Clinton stumbled at a 9/11 memorial event in New York. Clinton said at the time she was suffering from pneumonia.

Brazile also writes that the larger issue was that the Clinton campaign was “anaemic” and had taken on “the odour of failure”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Donna Brazile, the former Democratic National Committee chair. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

The former Clinton staffers – among them high-profile figures such as Huma Abedin, Jennifer Palmieri and campaign manager Robby Mook, the target of stringent criticism from Brazile – wrote: “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.”

Interviewed on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, Brazile referred to Clinton’s own book on her defeat by Donald Trump, What Happened.

“For those who are telling the me to shut up,” she said, “they told Hillary that a couple of months ago. You know what I tell them, go to hell. I’m going to tell my story. I’m going the tell my story.

“Because this is a story of a young girl who started in American politics at the age of nine, who continues to fight each and every week of her life … I care about my country. I care about our democracy. And I say go to hell because, why am I supposed to be the only person that is unable to tell my story?”

She also said she “got sick and tired of people trying to tell me how to spend money” as DNC chair, when she “wasn’t getting a salary. I was basically volunteering my time”.

“I’m not Patsey the slave,” Brazile said, referring to a character in the Oscar-winning film 12 Years a Slave.

In her book, Brazile writes that she did not ultimately try to make the change of candidate because: “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.”

On ABC, she admitted she had not had the power to make the change but said: “I had to put in on the the table … because I was under tremendous pressure after Secretary Clinton fainted to have a quote-unquote plan B. I didn’t want a plan B. Plan A was great for me. I supported Hillary and I wanted her to win. But we were under pressure.”

Brazile writes that on 12 September 2016, Biden’s chief of staff called saying the vice-president wanted to speak with her. Her thought, she writes, was: “Gee, I wonder what he wanted to talk to me about?”

On ABC, she said she did not mention the possible switch. “I mean, look, everybody was called in to see, do you know anything? How is she doing? And of course my job at the time … was to reassure people, not just the vice-president but also reassure the Democratic party, the members of the party, that Hillary was doing fine and that she would resume her campaign the following week.”

It is unclear if Biden was ever willing to step into the race. The former vice-president, who many believe could a run for the presidency in 2020, made no immediate comment.

Asked if she still thinks a Biden-Booker ticket could have won, Brazile equivocated, saying: “Well, you know, I had a lot of other combinations. This was something you play out in your mind.”

Regarding the primary, in which Sanders – a Vermont independent – mounted a surprisingly strong challenge, Brazile writes in her book that a joint fundraising agreement between Clinton and the DNC “looked unethical” and she felt Clinton had too much influence on the party.

She told ABC she did not agree with Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts, who agreed this week in an interview with CNN the primary was “rigged” against Sanders.

“I don’t think she meant the word rigged,” Brazile said, adding: “I’m on the rules and bylaws committee. I found no evidence, none whatsoever.”

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Clinton won the primary by about three million votes – roughly the same figure by which she won the popular vote against Trump, losing the presidency in the electoral college.

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Brazile was also asked about an email, hacked by Russian actors and leaked among thousands by WikiLeaks, in which she appeared to share likely questions with the Clinton team ahead of a primary debate.

She responded: “I said, straight up, I said, look, if this was sent, I know why I sent it. I apologize. I spent the entire month of August apologizing for the leaked hacked emails, which is a crime. And so far, no one has been charged with a crime. But I’ve apologized. I said I’m sorry.”

The current DNC chair, former Obama labor secretary Tom Perez, told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday it was “quite frankly ludicrous” to suggest Clinton could have been replaced and said readers would “perhaps start wondering about other claims in that book”.

On Saturday, Perez said he was committed to ensuring the nomination process in 2020 would be “unquestionably fair and transparent”.