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.