Democrats are divided when it comes to Hillary Clinton’s health. Some are circling the wagons, insisting that even the most modest questions about her weekend medical episode are sexist and reactionary. Others are arguing it is the latest sign the Clinton campaign needs to be more transparent.
In the latter camp is David Axelrod, who previously went toe to toe with the Clinton machine while running Barack Obama’s presidential campaign during the 2008 Democratic primaries.
“Antibiotics can take care of pneumonia,” he tweeted. “What’s the cure for an unhealthy penchant for privacy that repeatedly creates unnecessary problems?”
That is as much a criticism of Clinton’s private email server as it is her handling of health questions. But the former Obama adviser has said, “The issue isn’t health, it’s stealth.”
Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s communications director, pushed back by claiming the “public knows more about HRC than any nominee in history.” But Palmieri did concede Monday “We could have done better yesterday.”
A “Clinton ally” was quoted by the Hill as describing the weekend’s incident “a self-inflicted f—king nightmare.” Another complained, “Why couldn’t the campaign have just been aboveboard about this? She got sick. Tell people she’s sick and move on. I know they thought it would give the right-wingers something to pounce on, but who cares?”
Clinton’s high-profile fainting episode and brief subsequent disappearance from the public eye has instead taken what was once regarded as a fringe concern mainstream. The fashionably liberal New Yorker’s Sept. 12 cartoon compared her to a 1989 film in which the main characters try to conceal their boss’ death by making his corpse seem lifelike.
“People wanted her to act more like Bernie,” reads the caption, “but I don’t think they meant the one from ‘Weekend at Bernie’s.'”
Those who have been speculating Clinton is seriously ill claimed some measure of vindication. While nothing has proven their claims of throat cancer or various neurological disorders, they found the campaign having to walk back their own assurances about the Democratic nominee’s health and revise them to say she has pneumonia. So, they reason, what else might the Clinton campaign be hiding?
Yet some more advanced liberals see the fault as lying somewhere other than in the campaign or candidate’s lack of transparency. “I understand why insecure, sexist men need to believe women’s bodies are frail, but it’s not true,” argued feminist writer Amanda Marcotte. “Women outlive men.”
Former New York Times editor Jill Abrahamson complained about an “element of sexism” in the media coverage.
“I think the idea of a woman as weak is a sexist stereotype,” she told the BBC. “And I think the incident where she needs assistance to get into the van and there’s a video of that that’s been endlessly replayed, I think that feeds that stereotype which politically isn’t helpful but I think is unfair.”
Even before it was widely discussed among people who were open to voting for Clinton in the first place, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., described the health questions as “quite sexist.”
The Clinton campaign has since it announced it will release additional medical records for the candidate, though some details remain up in the air. That may satisfy liberals and Democrats looking for more transparency, but not those who see this as evidence the vast right-wing conspiracy rides again.
