Hillary Clinton’s mother, Dorothy Howell Rodham, had had the same health condition her daughter has (or at least used blood thinners for some condition) since she was about 49. She lived to age 92. So get off the hysteria wagon about Clinton’s health, folks.
Around the time of the Dem convention I read a lengthy profile of Clinton in which her famous Wellesley graduation speech was discussed. The article mentioned that her mother, Dorothy Rodham, could not be present because she was on blood-thinning medication and could not fly.
Obviously, Mrs. Rodham eventually was able to fly, even though she probably remained on blood-thinning medication, in more modern varieties, for the last four decades of her life, and remained fully mentally competent at least until she became very elderly. I’m presuming that Mrs. Rodham had the same condition that Clinton has and that Clinton inherited the condition from her mother.**
As for pneumonia, well, it’s not like that’s uncommon or any more debilitating than having a bad case of the flu. It does drain the patient of energy, often for a little while after the other symptoms are mostly gone, as does bronchitis and certain strains of flu.
What I hope Clinton does is rest for as long as she really needs to, and simply post videos about her policy positions. I hope also that Tim Kaine holds large rallies and makes other appearances serving as her voice, about her own policy positions and about the Mercers’, and will run short videos of Clinton discussing her policies. I also would love to see Kaine use campaign events to refute the pay-to-play Clinton Foundation/State Dept. charges and explain exactly what the situations were in each of the instances. As in, they were trivial and of the sort that has been standard regarding favoritism in access and in fact resulted in nothing or they actually were completely appropriate (e.g., a request for a diplomatic passport by someone who was traveling to North Korea with Bill Clinton and others to try to negotiate the release of two journalists being held there, a request that was denied but whose purpose obviously was as additional physical protection; a meeting with some Middle Eastern prince who had met as well with Clinton’s predecessors and since then with Kerry because he holds a position of power in his government, and whom Clinton knew personally–points that Clinton and her campaign should have made clear to the public).
Kaine is very smart and very articulate, and has gotten precious little* news-media attention for his campaign events. He certainly wasn’t among my top hopes for Clinton’s running mate, but after reading about a speech of his a week or two ago I’ve become a fan. And he’s absolutely perfect to speak in-depth about the types of civil rights issues involving the courts that I myself care so much about and that never, ever get any sustained attention from the news media of politicians. Kaine is a former civil rights and criminal defense lawyer, in state as well as in federal court, I believe. That matters more than you can even imagine.
And as a former obsessive Bernie supporter who has never been a Hillary Clinton fan and who has repeatedly, here at AB, criticized her campaign and her campaigning not what I’d expected or hoped for, I should have some credibility when I remind progressive voters of my bent, and moderate voters too, that Clinton and Tim Kaine each, either temporarily or permanently, would beat Trump or Pence by roughly 100,000 miles on things we care about. Such as Supreme Court (including the fate of Citizens United) and the makeup of the lower federal courts.
In this recent post, I mentioned a slew of other such specific considerations, and I invite y’all to read it notwithstanding its considerable length.
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*CORRECTION: The sentence originally inadvertently omitted the key word in it: little.
Added 9/12 at 1:46 p.m.
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** The condition is deep vein thrombosis. An article by Todd C. Frankel in today’s Washington Post, published online last night says:
She has deep vein thrombosis, which requires her to take a daily dose of a blood thinner that needs frequent testing. Her personal physician, Lisa Bardack, disclosed last year Clinton’s treatment with the drug Coumadin.
I read that article last night and assumed that information would be all over the internet by this morning, but I guess it’s not.
Added 9/12 at 4:26 p.m.
Republicans for the first time care about women’s health.
Yeah.
There will be a degree of reluctance to vote somebody President who has active health concerns. It is just a fact and not something to get worked up about. I doubt that it loses her this election, but if she ends up losing and plausibly her health was a deciding factor, well the message would be don’t nominate such a candidate.
LBJ had had two heart attacks before he beat Goldwater in a landslide. The next three years saw the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare, and the appointment of Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court.
Those years also, of course, saw the dramatic escalation of the Vietnam War. But Johnson didn’t pursue the war because he’d had two heart attacks, and his two heart attacks didn’t keep him from doing it.
Does anyone really think Donald Trump is a specimen of great physical health? And then, of course, there’s the issue of his mental health.
The campaigning you really should be complaining about is by the DNC, DSCC and DCCC — the absence of any campaign, that is. They think their only job is to support viable candidates individually. Yet at no time since 1932 have the two parties been so distinguishable and the Republican Party so susceptible to effective destruction as a viable political force. There should be massive brand advertising on TV and in print — why the Democratic Party is so good and why the Republican Party is utterly terrible — that supports all the candidates from the top down, including ones who could pull off an upset if enough people are totally turned off by the Republican Party. It is a zero sum game, with only a winner and a loser, and the thing is, you don’t have to be untruthful or even exaggerate to send a devastating message.
Instead, we get nothing like that. The the lack of any strategic communications thinking at the DNC is truly stunning. I don’t know what to attribute it to except to surmise that the DC-based organizations are in such a bubble of prosperity there and enjoy the bipartisan party scene so much that they don’t want to get too aggressive.
Funny, the Republicans don’t think like that. They are scorched earth all the way, even when they have to lie to say anything.
Hey, the North Korea trip was evidence of Clinton corruption, too. It was nothing but an excuse for Bill to get a free trip to Pyongyang.
Pray tell Beverly, what condition does Hillary have that her mother had? I’ve looked all over the net and can’t find any admission of a specific illness which afflicted Dorothy other than obits which mentioned an unnamed “heart condition”. Please enlighten us.
Sorry; it’s deep vein thrombosis. A Washington Post article about it from last night says:
“She has deep vein thrombosis, which requires her to take a daily dose of a blood thinner that needs frequent testing. Her personal physician, Lisa Bardack, disclosed last year Clinton’s treatment with the drug Coumadin.”
I figured it was all over the news by this morning but surprisingly it’s not.
And I’ve know two people on blood thinners who had minor falls and the doctors could not stop their internal bleeding. Both died.
No doubt. But it’s a common medication and if properly regulated, as it is for most patients, it has no impact on life expectancy. And as I said in my post, Tim Kaine would, in my opinion, make an excellent president. Donald Trump–who may be on other drugs, or that one–and Mike Pence, not so much.
Again, in my opinion.
My mom is on coumadin and took a fall last December. She’s still fine. Or as fine as one can be at 85 and on chemo for multiple myeloma for five years.
The plural of anecdote isn’t data.
Just to be clear, she was hospitalized for a couple weeks after her fall. She fractured a couple vertebrae and still wears a back brace. But she’s alive and ambulatory and a couple decades older than Hillary–who she supports, BTW.
Thanks Ms Mann! Washington Post? I guess Google is slipping, or maybe operator error. The blood thinner in and of itself doesn’t impact life expectancy but DVT can be a dangerous condition.
The thing is we can immediately know when Trump’s lying. Mrs. Clinton, not so much.
I guess Kaine could handle it.
“The plural of anecdote isn’t data.”
Making Clinton’s mother’s health irrelevant.
@Warren,
More to the point, making this statement of yours irrelevant:
“And I’ve know two people on blood thinners who had minor falls and the doctors could not stop their internal bleeding. Both died.”
Just countering one anecdote with another.
It doesn’t really matter what she has any more. It’s all over we will be looking at President Trump on Nov. 8th.
It’s too bad the democrats didn’t have anyone that could have won this….. oh wait they did and they rigged the primary to get rid of him.