There was a hopefully forgotten moment in the Bosch-like churn of the 2012 presidential campaign when rumors were circulating that Donald Trump had documents showing Michelle Obama and Barack Obama had filed for divorce. That was ripe baloney.

But it turns out that the president had considered dumping his other No 2.

The Obama re-election team convened focus groups and conducted polls to figure out whether they should replace vice-president Joe Biden with then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton, according to a new book by a pair of insider Washington journalists, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann.

The numbers didn't add up, however, and Biden stayed on. “When the research came back near the end of the year, it suggested that adding Clinton to the ticket wouldn’t materially improve Obama’s odds,” the authors write in Double Down, their follow up to Game Change, the smash-hit history of the Sarah Palin days. An excerpt of the new book was first obtained by the New York Times.

Former White House chief of staff Bill Daley admitted Friday that he had supported efforts to figure out whether it wouldn’t be better to jettison Joe.

"Lots of issues in 2011 were looked at," Daley told CBS News. "And it was looked at. But it was never seriously looked at in the sense that there was a belief that it ought to be done or needed to be done, and the truth is that any research that was done confirmed the fact that it was not an issue voters cared about or thought should be done."

Senior adviser David Plouffe tweeted Thursday evening that whatever the campaign was up to, the vice-president never enjoyed anything less than the president's full confidence.

David Plouffe (@davidplouffe) Never any - any - consideration of VP/HRC switch. Not even entertained by the only person who mattered. Or most of us. Back to Halloween.

"Never any – any – consideration of VP/HRC switch," Plouffe wrote. "Not even entertained by the only person who mattered. Or most of us. Back to Halloween."

Biden has not commented on the revelation. His tenure has been defined by a close working relationship with the president, occasional slips of tongue and lapses of co-ordination notwithstanding. Reports that the vice-president might be replaced circulated in the media as late as May 2012, but the move was seen by sharp minds as unlikely.

Double Down contains other salient tidbits for close watchers of Washington. For example the source behind Senate leader Harry Reid's assertion that Republican candidate Mitt Romney had not paid 10 years of taxes turns out to have been Jon Huntsman Sr, whose namesake son ran a short-lived presidential campaign. The tax charge was potent because Romney refused – through election day – to reveal how much he'd paid and how much he’d hid. The elder Huntsman denied at the time that he was Reid's source. (The Romneys and Huntsmans are towers of the Mormon church. Reid is a Mormon convert.)

The bonbons of campaign secrets are being shared out as part of a pre-publication PR blitz for the title, which is put out by Penguin.