Margolis: It would behoove Bernie Sanders to be candid about health issues – vtdigger.org

Jon Margolis is VTDiggers political analyst.

Not for the first time, Sen. Bernie Sanders has something in common with his political opposite, President Donald Trump: Both of them are having a very bad October.

October is not half done, and right now it doesnt seem likely to get any better for either of them.

Not that the two cases are identical. Trump created his own troubles; no external power forced him to ask that favor of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It was Trumps choice.

Having a heart attack was not Sanders choice. It came upon him unbidden, unannounced and unwelcome on the first day of the month in Las Vegas. He spent most of the next three days in the hospital, leaving on the evening of Oct. 4 with two stents in an artery and the announcement that he had suffered a myocardial infarction.

Thats a heart attack. Having a heart attack was nothing Sanders or anyone on his campaign could control. To that extent, his political troubles are not his responsibility.

What Sanders does have control over, however, is what he tells the American people about his medical condition.

His campaign could have been more forthright, but instead obfuscated by:

Those were decisions, political decisions which have made October worse for Sanders than the heart attack itself. The first decision being perhaps less than candid about the candidates health was the campaigns.

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The other two were mistakes made by the veteran politician himself, as though he were a rookie politician who didnt know that its never smart to flip-flop from one day to the next.

Especially when the flip-flop was so feeble. The media didnt make a big deal about it. He did. He elaborated on Tuesday, saying: We were doing, you know, [in] some cases five or six meetings a day, three or four rallies and town meetings and meeting with groups of people. I dont think Im going to do that.

A statement that somehow morphed the next day into, I want to start off slower and build up and build up and build up.

But Sanders really had to backpedal on the change the nature of the campaign statement. And that was a sure ticket to defeat.

A low energy campaign has never succeeded, at least not since the early 19th century when candidates could remain dignified on their front porch while surrogates roamed the land lambasting the opposition and handing out money.

Its also a de facto confession that the candidate is not well. Voters prefer healthy candidates, which explains why campaigns routinely try to downplay any suggestions that their candidate is ailing.

Garrison Nelson, a retired University of Vermont political science professor, has a copy of a 1944 letter in which Dr. Francis Lahey, founder of the Lahey Clinic in Massachusetts, wrote that after examining President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he did not believe that he had the physical capacity to complete a term.

Lahey told Adm. Ross McIntire, Roosevelts physician, but McIntire did not tell FDR, who was reelected that November and died the following April.

Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Reagan were also less than candid about their health and vigor from time to time. In 2000, former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley was gaining on Vice President Al Gore in New Hampshire primary polls until he entered a hospital for atrial fibrillation, an irregular heartbeat. His political progress immediately stalled, either because of the fibrillation (which doctors consider a nuisance rather than a danger) or because his campaign, too, wasnt immediately candid about his condition.

The Sanders campaign waited three days before using the term heart attack in public. Whether that was prudence or avoidance is open to interpretation. What is certain is that the campaign did not make the doctors who examined and treated the candidate available to reporters.

Without information from physicians there is no way to know how serious the heart attack was or how long it will take Sanders to recover. According to the American Heart Association, most heart attack patients go back to work within two weeks to three months depending on the severity of the heart attack.

Sanders plans to participate in the next candidate debate on Tuesday. Thats two weeks after his heart attack. Whether preparing for a debate qualifies as being back to work is another of the several uncertainties surrounding the question of his health.

He seems to know he cant let those uncertainties linger indefinitely. In an interview with CNN Thursday, Sanders said at the appropriate time well make all the medical records public for you or anyone else who wants to see them.

He did not explain why the appropriate time is not now.

The heart association noted that successful recovery from myocardial infarction usually includes a cardiac rehabilitation program. Such programs, said the Harvard Medical School, include three hour-long sessions per week for a period of 12 weeks.

Its hard to fit that into a campaign schedule.

Sanders does not have most of the risk factors obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure that would make a second heart attack likely. He doesnt smoke. Hes in good shape for a man his age.

But he is a man his age (78), and while his heart attack appears to have been mild, a mild heart attack is a health risk.

After a first heart attack, according to the Heart Association, most people go on to live a long, productive life. However, around 20 percent of patients age 45 and older will have another heart attack within five years of their first.

In other words, people who have had a heart attack run a substantially greater risk of having another.

Garrison Nelson, never one to mince words, said what many voters have to be thinking: Bernie is 78 years old and has become so enraptured with the adulation he began receiving in 2016 that he cant give it up. Thats unfortunate. At 78, with a heart condition, he runs the risk of dying.

So does everyone, and it would be premature to assume the Sanders candidacy is over. He has (also sharing this with Trump) a devoted following. He can be a very effective politician, as shown in a new seven-minute video released Thursday morning in which the candidate appearing old but vigorous assailed a dysfunctional and cruel health care system, and pledged that he would win this struggle.

Thanks to that following (and plenty of money) Sanders could run a scaled-back campaign for a few weeks lots of emails and videos, only a few personal appearances. But in a competitive race and one in which he was already losing support that would be difficult to sustain for long.

It may be significant, then, that in the last few days, some politically sophisticated people have wondered whether the Sanders campaign is on its way out, and whether Sanders knows it.

I think Bernie knows these health revelations combined with age will have an impact on how voters perceive his electability, said UVM political science professor Deborah Guber, suggesting that he is opting to stay in the race in order to wield influence over the nomination.

Speculation, but the existence of such speculation and the fact that it cannot be casually dismissed means Bernie Sanders is not having a good October.

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Jon Margolis is the author of "The Last Innocent Year: America in 1964." Margolis left the Chicago Tribune early in 1995 after 23 years as Washington correspondent, sports writer, correspondent-at-large and general columnist. He was previously the Albany Bureau Chief for Newsday and has also been a reporter for the Bergen Record in Hackensack, N.J.; the Miami Herald and the Concord Monitor (N.H.). A native of New Jersey, Margolis graduated from Oberlin College in 1962. He served in the U.S. Army.

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Margolis: It would behoove Bernie Sanders to be candid about health issues - vtdigger.org