Check out this essay by the Market Ticker:
Hillary's campaign ended today with the now-infamous all-on collapse that the spin doctors are now claiming was due to "pneumonia" she "was diagnosed with Friday."
Yeah, sure it was.
But you know what? It doesn't matter, really, whether that's a lie or not.
Facts aside, optics matter in politics. The one place you cannot have a wipe-out of this sort is on the grounds of a terrorist attack 15 years ago, after saying the President must be "solid as a rock" in an attack on your opponent a few days earlier, then literally collapsing and having to be stuffed into aVanbulance like a side of beef during a service to honor the dead.
The one thing the President must do is present the persona of Superman/woman. It's never true, of course; a President can die like everyone else but that is what everyone wants to believe and buys in a Presidential election. There is no place the presentation of that persona matters more than on the ground where a bunch of muslim nutjobs murdered 3,000 people during a service to honor the dead and remember the events of the day 15 years ago.
To display your own mortality to the point that you're unable to stand and appear to have lost consciousness on such a day, in such a place, is fatal to a candidate's run for President.
The fact is that Hillary lost the election today, and it was lost irretrievably.
Hillary has displayed several instances of behavior previously that called her medical status into question, but she and her campaign have dismissed them as part of the vast right-wing conspiracy. The coughing fits, the twitchy behavior that looks suspiciously like a petit mal seizure and more all have led people to ask very-valid questions, especially given her known medical history and previous physical issues. The response has been typical Clinton: Talk to the hand.
But this event came on a pleasant early-fall day, not a blistering-hot mid-summer noontime event. New York was "suffering" under low-80s temperatures, humidity well under 50% and a pleasant, roughly 10 mph breeze, the stifling heatwave previously over the northeast having broken. In other words, exactly the sort of day on which you'd take your young child to the zoo or stroll along the lakefront, river, or ocean without a care in the world. There were thousands upon thousands of people at the service and nobody was falling over from heatstroke. The collapse itself was caught on high-resolution video, everyone has picked it up including AP and it clearly shows Hillary literally collapsing into someone's arms and being dragged, feet behind her, into the van to spirit her out of there.
Were anyone else to collapse in such a sudden and dramatic fashion the gurney would be out and the person in an ambulance headed for the nearest hospitalstat. But not Hillary, you see, we are told instead that she went to Chelsea's apartment and was "fine" a short while later, instead of her receiving immediate medical intervention while the press was barred from leaving their pen and reporting on what actually happened. (Speaking of which, since when can a political candidate prevent the press from leaving their press pen? I didn't know being a member of the press subjected you to arbitrary arrest at the whim of a disabled candidate's handlers....)
Incidentally, having witnessed persons suffering from heat and dehydration-related impairment in the past you are not "fine" an hour or two later, especiallywithout medical intervention including, if dehydration is involved, IV fluids. However, if what Hillary suffered was in fact some form of seizure then yes, being "ok" a couple of hours later is entirely within the realm of reasonable expectation. Of course admitting to any sort of seizure disorder would, effectively, be a withdrawal from the Presidential race, especially after concealing the condition up until now. Thus, the "explanation" that flies in the fact of observed facts.
Hillary's campaign is over, whether you or she wishes to admit it or not. But more to the point, if she does not drop out, given what appears to be a set of very serious health issues, the next two months may literally kill her. I strongly dislike Hillary and emailgate is just a small part of it, but even though I'm a "deplorable" by her view I don't wish her dead. She ought to retire from political life and go home to spend whatever time she has left in peace. She's clearly in no shape whatsoever to serve in any sort of public office capacity and the entire world saw that this morning in an undeniable, in-your-face fashion.
I know Hillary's blind ambition would not allow this sort of honest self-reflection when she had a game-playing chance to win, but those odds have evaporated. Trump is now effectively running unopposed and there is nothing the DNC or Hillary can do about it.
There is no longer any profit in Hillary remaining in the race; it's over. Now it's a matter of whether she, and her handlers, will choose to protect what remains of her life or whether they will risk squandering literally everything with no hope of success.
Go home Hillary. I know you believed you were "the chosen one", but it was not to be. You simply aren't in good enough medical condition to continue to run, say much less serve, and the entire electorate saw that today. It's an unbridgeable gap and it is not worth squandering your life on what has now, as of this morning, become a Quixotic quest.
