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Health of Candidates Could Be an October Surprise
Sad and distressing news from the campaign trail today, with Democrat / Independent candidate Bernie Sanders stepping off the trail because of chest pain and heart surgery to correct a blockage. NRO reports,
Bernie Sanders’s campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination has canceled campaign events “until further notice” and postponed a planned purchase of TV ads in Iowa after Sanders had to undergo emergency heart surgery on Tuesday.
Sanders, 78, “experienced some chest discomfort” during a campaign event Tuesday evening, senior campaign adviser Jeff Weaver said in a statement. He was hospitalized in Las Vegas, where he was slated to speak at an event on gun violence with the March for Our Lives.
“Following medical evaluation and testing he was found to have a blockage in one artery and two stents were successfully inserted,” Weaver said. He added that Sanders is “conversing and in good spirits” and will be “resting up over the next few days.”
With all of the concern over impeachment and the health of Supreme Court justices leading up to the election, today’s news reminds us that the health of elderly candidates on a stressful campaign trail, filled with too much junk food and too little sleep, meeting thousands of people leading up to cold and flu season should be more on our radars.
Published in General
I’ll “feel the Bern” on this and wish him well.
Me Too.
Remember when ‘October surprises’ were in the October of the election year and not the year before? Good times. Meanwhile wishing the Senator a good recovery.
Add in Biden claiming senility to avoid testifying in the Trump impeachment trial, and it sounds like Fauxcahontas/Spartacus 2020.
As was noted in Twitter, will he be going to Cuba since their health system is better?
amen
Hope he recovers quickly.
But in case some voters were not aware, there is a very real correlation between age and death. Might make sense to shy away from candidates north of 75.
Bernie should recover quickly — stents are marvelous compared to heart surgery. I wish him well. However, this development seems to tip the political balance toward Elizabeth Warren as the Democrat nominee for president.
Besides death there’s senility to consider.
While I would not wish death or suffering on anyone*, it would be poetic justice if they could have put him on a government wait list for about three months.
*That’s a lie, but one you’re expected to make. My list is short and private.
Also hoping here that Bernie has a full recovery. But there is a certain irony in that when Reagan, Dole, McCain and even Trump ran for president, we were presented with numerous articles on questions about their health at their advancing age, which the pundit-left world was also more than willing to pontificate about to no end. Now we’re in 2019, where it’s been like pulling teeth to get the same media types to talk about Biden’s possible age-related memory problems, while the news about Bernie’s heart problems this morning also came on a narrative that had barely mentioned his advancing age as a possible negative health factor in being able to handle the rigors of what basically is a two-year campaign.
Bernie also got far more of a pass in 2016, where if age was mentioned at all, it was more on his grumpy old man demeanor, and not about whether or not he’s healthy enough to make it through the gauntlet (and of course in 2016 we also had the 9/11 Memorial incident, where the media did everything they could not to admit senior citizen Hillary had to be dragged back into her van like a rag doll after collapsing outside of it). It’s Bernie’s call, of course, and the call of his supporters on whether or not this is a concern going forward, but it is another example of the coverage double standard, where age is pushed by the media as more of a disqualifying factor if the elderly candidate has a ‘R’ instead of a ‘D’ next to their name.
I have almost boundless animus towards this delusional Red, but I wish him a speedy recovery, preferably at the hands of Cuban doctors who fled Communism.
In his preferred medical care scheme, he might be denied care due to his age. Remember Obama’s remark “just give her a pain pill”?
I think the big heart attack came to Bernie’s campaign hopes. It was fatal. ;)
I wish him personally the best of health, though.
As I’ve said about other aging candidates and office holders of both parties, if you refuse to retire at a reasonable age, you risk having people hoping for your death. Whatever force is acting on this – very prevalent in our Senate – should be addressed.
I have no special sympathy for Bernie. There are literally thousands of men and women his age going through the same thing at this moment, and apparently, since they haven’t been sucking off the government teat for decades and loudly proclaiming our country horrifically flawed, they don’t get any press, and consequently no great outpouring of sympathy. When something like this happens, I think of them and feel for them all collectively, and Bernie is just one of them. Isn’t that Bernie’s basic message anyway? Or will he and his family say he is more important because he’s a leader and activist? The latter would be in keeping with his hypocritical ideology.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’m repulsed by the “sad and distressing” pablum. Is it really just that one has to say that or be accused of malice? Myself, I’m not celebrating ( although if I thought he had a real chance to win I might…)
Somehow I can’t believe Bethany is actually “sad and distressed”. Language abuse.
I hate to sound like a jerk, but that news is neither sad nor distressing. Bernie Sanders is a pretty awful man, with an agenda that if ever enacted would do lasting harm to this country. He is openly hypocritical about those views, which tells me that he is either amazingly stupid or amazingly evil. Virtually every word out of his mouth is a point against him as a decent human being. He doesn’t even attempt to couch his angry and cynical personal philosophy in positive terms in order to sell them – he just encourages others to feel the same way.
Regardless, it is this strange knee-jerk thing we do where we respond to literally every instance of a known bad (like heart disease, sudden death, etc…) by pretending to actually be sad or distressed. Yet, when we pick up the newspaper and see that someone has died, we aren’t saddened, and we certainly aren’t distressed. These are strangers. Bernie isn’t just a stranger who you know nothing about, he’s a stranger where everything you do know about him makes him far less sympathetic.
Same goes for quite a lot of people. If Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies, I will say “this is terribly sad for her family and loved ones, and we should acknowledge the positives about her (I’ve read quite a few from justices like Gorsush and Scalia); but as far as ‘tragic’ is concerned, it’s not at all. She’s extremely old and has lived a long life. As far as actually being ‘sad and distressing,’ it’s not at all. Her jurisprudence is wrongheaded and bad for the country. Replacing her with a constitutionally-minded judge will be a fantastic thing.” Point being, if she dies suddenly, while we have a republican in office and the ability to replace her – it will be the opposite of sad and distressing.
We need to be able to compartmentalize and distinguish between recognizing the inherent sadness in things like death and illness, and also recognizing the fact that these things are only actually sad in the abstract, unless you actually know the person. I think we can be respectful without telling nonsensical lies.
Most preferably at the hands of the Cuban doctors still in Cuba, practicing the sort of medicine that Bernie wishes to impose in this country.
For the sake of consistency – I will admit that I was truly distressed when Antonin Scalia died. Not because I was sad about the untimely nature of his death, not because I was personally attached to him in any way (although, I did love reading his opinions). Pretty much solely because I understood his value to the court and I also understood that he would likely be replaced by someone who would do things that I strongly disagree with (and which I think are of great importance). It was actually distressing. The potential loss of Bernie Sanders is the opposite of that.
That’s pretty much what I was trying to say, and you said it much better!