"After Clinton’s fainting spell, some Democratic insiders were abuzz with talk of replacing her — and Brazile says she was giving it considerable thought."

"The morning of Sept. 12, Brazile got a call from Biden’s chief of staff saying the vice president wanted to speak with her. She recalls thinking, 'Gee, I wonder what he wanted to talk to me about?' Jeff Weaver, campaign manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), called, too, to set up a call with his boss, and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley sent her an email. Brazile also was paid a surprise visit in her DNC office by [senior Clinton campaign official Charlie] Baker, who, she writes, was dispatched by the Clinton campaign 'to make sure that Donna didn’t do anything crazy.' 'Again and again I thought about Joe Biden,' Brazile writes. But, she adds, 'No matter my doubts and my fears about the election and Hillary as a candidate, I could not make good on that threat to replace her.'"

And: "Brazile writes that she considered a dozen combinations to replace the nominees and settled on Biden and Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), the duo she felt most certain would win over enough working-class voters to defeat Republican Donald Trump. But then, she writes, '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.'"

From "Donna Brazile: I considered replacing Clinton with Biden as 2016 Democratic nominee" (WaPo).

Brazile seems to be saying that she had the power to dump the candidate and she would have used that power but for the fact that Hillary is a woman.

To say "I could not do this" to "all the women in the country who were so proud of and excited about her" is to show the downside of getting so deeply into identity politics. Hillary's campaign was about the excitement of getting a woman President, not the importance of Democratic Party policies and values. That message becomes nothing if Hillary isn't the candidate. And they couldn't start over, even by swapping in the well-known Vice President, Biden, because replacing the woman with a man was symbolically awful, especially after all the hopes and dreams were pinned on the (presumed) excitement of getting a woman President.