HILLARY HAS [WALKING?] PNEUMONIA.

Hillary Clinton has cancelled a trip to California to attend fundraising events after it emerged the Democratic presidential nominee has pneumonia and been advised to rest by her doctor.

An aide announced the cancellation on Sunday night following Clinton’s abrupt departure from the 9/11 memorial ceremony in downtown Manhattan because, her campaign initially said, she felt “overheated”.

Clinton was scheduled to attend fundraisers on Monday and Tuesday in California, and tape an episode of the Ellen DeGeneres Show.

Her preference for privacy dates back to 1998, but the mysterious episode in New York has only increased the clamor for the two major party nominees to release more complete medical histories.

POLITICO

Hillary Clinton’s health – long the obsession of conspiracy theorists — emerged Sunday as a legitimate campaign issue after Clinton nearly swooned and stumbled at a Sept. 11 commemoration, underscoring the sense that that summer’s sure-thing candidate is flagging at a pivotal moment.

The scare was captured on cellphone video showing the wobbly Democratic candidate — who was diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday, according to a report by her doctor and later forwarded to reporters — being lifted into the vehicle by her aides after leaving a memorial service at the site of the 2001 World Trade Center attack.

The incident comes after ... what was arguably the shakiest 48 hours of her general-election campaign that began when she called Trump supporters “deplorables,” a rare gaffe by a fastidiously stage-managed candidate.

The announcement late Sunday by Clinton’s personal physician, Lisa Bardack, that Clinton had become “overheated and dehydrated” after being placed on antibiotics last week.  "After being diagnosed with pneumonia, Hillary Clinton ran a two-hour national security meeting, gave a press conference [?], and spent an hour and a half in the heat at a September 11 event," said Peter Daou, who worked for Clinton in the past and now has a communications firm.

Even as reporters waited for more details, supporters — for the first time — were quietly pressuring a candidate who has been reluctant to share details about her health and personal life to become more transparent to avoid a drip-drip of doubt that could help an even less forthcoming Trump.

The announcement that the candidate is suffering from a lung ailment — which came after her staff stonewalled reporters and pronounced her fully recovered — isn’t likely to instantly quell questions about her long-term fitness.

"The Clintons have this notion that they only go as far as they need to" in terms of disclosure, said an ally close to the current Democratic nominee. "They can't afford to approach this that way."

Presidential politics is, by design, a brutal vetting process, and the physical capacity of anyone seeking the office is the ultimate gateway question. But in Trump’s hands it has become positively gladiatorial, thanks to his chest-beating emphasis on his own physical prowess, size, and stamina.

Partisans have long raised health issues in campaigns — Ronald Reagan’s opponents repeatedly questioned his mental acuity, and Bill Clinton’s supporters were delighted by a January 1992 video of George H.W. Bush vomiting during a dinner with the prime minister of Japan. Dwight Eisenhower's 1955 heart attack and subsequent health issues were a factor in his 1956 reelection race. [which he won by a landslide, also against a candidate who was considered unsuitable to be president. In that case the nominee, Adlai Stevenson, was considered to peace-loving to protect the country during the Cold War with Russia--Esco]

But Trump has personally ridiculed Clinton’s health with a bluntness not seen in recent times, suggesting she’s been hobbled by a serious 2012 head injury and mocking her repeated allergy-induced coughing fits. “Mainstream media never covered Hillary’s massive ‘hacking’ or coughing attack, yet it is #1 trending. What’s up?” he tweeted after a coughing fit interrupted a Clinton speech on Sept. 6.

“Donald Trump is hardly a physical specimen. He’s a 70-year-old fat guy who doesn’t exercise — let him run a hard mile on a treadmill,” said Stuart Stevens, Mitt Romney’s top strategist in 2012 and a frequent critic of Trump. “What does Hillary Clinton’s health have to do with making Donald Trump more attractive or vice versa? ... People get all excited about it and they think it’s going to help their team win, but it doesn’t seem to effect what happens on the field.”

People close to Clinton dismissed the incident as an outlier.

“I'm not worried at all,” Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said. “As long as she performs well and looks strong in the debates, that's all that matters.”

Despite her bouts with seasonal allergies, Clinton has appeared energetic at her public events

And several other party leaders and Clinton backers, who didn’t speak on the record to avoid antagonizing Clinton and her Brooklyn-based campaign, told POLITICO she needed to offer a fuller accounting of her health – especially after a transcript of Clinton’s FBI interview regarding her email server showed that she “could not recall every briefing she received” as a result of “a concussion” and “blood clot” around New Year’s 2012.

By Sunday afternoon, the 68-year-old Clinton was already facing calls to release her full medical records — something that her 70-year-old, corpulent, junk-food-gobbling opponent, who has proudly posed with a KFC chicken bucket, has thus far refused to do. Trump’s own physician has admitted that the hyperbolic clean-bill-of-health he dashed off for the candidate was written to please his famous patient.  

Still, the incident has ratcheted up pressure on both candidates to provide a serious accounting of their health....“Having worked in a White House for a full first term, I can tell you that is a very physically and emotionally demanding job,” said Matt Schlapp, who served as George W. Bush’s political director and helped handle the fallout of an embarrassing incident where the commander-in-chief nearly choked on a pretzel while watching TV with his dog.

One of the good things about the way we run for president is that it also is very physically and emotionally exhausting, and in that way it serves as a good dry run,” he added. “We have two candidates who are senior citizens and I think it is good and right that the American public demands a full accounting of their health.”


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/hillary-clinton-health-trump-228008#ixzz4K0jcrfr8 
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