Hillary Clinton stumbles -- will her campaign follow?

A weekend of stumbles has Hillary Clinton suddenly looking vulnerable at a pivotal moment of her battle with Donald Trump.

Her swoon Sunday at muggy Ground Zero -- and damaging video of Clinton lurching into the arms of her security detail -- dramatically turned the state of her health from conservative conspiracy theory into a genuine campaign issue.

The episode also exacerbates questions about transparency that have long dogged Clinton's White House bid after the campaign revealed the Democratic nominee is suffering from pneumonia -- a fact it kept quiet since Friday.

But Sunday's drama was just merely a capstone on Clinton's rough 48 hours.

 

Hillary Clinton expresses regret for comment 

Clinton aides spent Saturday cleaning up her remark that "half" of Trump's supporters were "deplorables," meaning racists, sexists and homophobes. The remark, for which she later expressed "regret," suddenly united a Republican Party that has struggled to get behind its divisive nominee.

The double blows came at just the wrong time for the 68-year-old Clinton, as Trump closes in the polls and pressure builds ahead of the first presidential debate in two weeks -- an event shaping up to be a potentially pivotal moment of the campaign.

 

Tight race in several battleground states 

Whether Clinton's rocky weekend will turn out to be just another unexpected twist in an election season that has had everything, or exert a lasting political impact will only become clear in the coming days. She canceled a trip to California schedule for Monday and Tuesday. The speed of her recovery and the way her enemies handle the episode will do much to shape how voters respond to her health issue.

Weekend on defense

But a weekend on defense and a possibly reduced schedule going forward threatens to slow Clinton's campaign at an unwelcome moment and will do little to calm increasingly jittery Democrats who only weeks ago were speculating about the possibility of an electoral landslide.

Donna Brazile, the interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, released a reassuring statement late Sunday wishing Clinton a "speedy recovery."

"I look forward to seeing her back out on the campaign trail and continuing on the path to victory," she said.

It was bad enough for Clinton that she had to leave the ceremony marking the 15th anniversary of the September 11 attacks early -- setting off alarm bells among her traveling press pool. But the later emergence of video showing her wobbly, staggering and stumbling before being helped into her black van conjured up the kind of image, played over and over on television, that campaign strategists dread.

News Courtesy: www.cnn.com