Clinton scare shakes up the race

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 two weeks of tightening polls that have seen Trump close to within striking distance nationally and in some battleground states and capped off 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 came after a day of frenzied speculation about the candidate’s health and its impact on a tightening race.

“It’s not the end of the world — I think she’s OK — but it ain’t good,” one person close to the Clintons said after the former secretary of state emerged from daughter Chelsea’s Manhattan apartment after becoming “overheated” at Ground Zero. “It adds a new, unwelcome element.”

Longtime Clinton adviser James Carville said, ‘The doctors have all said she’s healthy,” but added: “It’s going to be something that people aren’t going to be able to stop talking about, so we’ll see” what happens next.