Hillary’s not allowed to be sick right now.  Not with two months to go. That’s not fair. But, that’s the way it is. I have no doubt that Hillary has the stamina and health to be president. But, now she has to show that she has the stamina and health to win the presidency.

I live in Manhattan. It was hot and steamy Friday, Saturday, and 9/11 Sunday. Not so much the heat as the humidity.  I can’t imagine standing in a crowd, in a business suit, in that humidity. I spent the day in shorts and a t-shirt and couldn’t handle being outside for longer than it took me to walk to the corner grocery.

The campaign says that she’ll be back on the campaign trail Thursday. A number of doctors have suggested that in order to recover from pneumonia, she should take six days or so off. Maybe this is for the best. She’s a terrible campaigner.  Maybe it is better for her to run a Twenty-First Century version of a front-porch campaign, with Barack, Joe, Tim, and Big Bill doing the talking, and Hillary receiving visitors at Chappaqua where, between sips of herbal tea, she describes her plans for making community college more affordable.   And then she re-emerges at the first debate in radiant health, eviscerating the puffy Donald Trump.

The other scenario is that she yields the floor to Trump all week.  She’ll make a few calls into talk shows. Tim Kaine will report that, “I have talked to Hillary on the phone today. She sounds great.”  Thirteen days from now she could still be coughing at the first debate.

She can’t help that she’s sick.  But, she can’t be sick right now.  Even before Sunday, she’s been a very faint presence on the campaign trail.  She left her convention with a massive bump and then sat on her lead through August and spent the time raising a lot of money, with the idea that she’d use September to elaborate on her policies and vision for the country.

Voters want to see you work for it.  That’s all she has to do to lock this up.  Just show them that she’s a fighter, has some vision, and that she wants their votes.

I’m thinking Obama on election eve in 2008. He had it locked up, but finished the campaign late at night in Pennsylvania at an outdoor rally in a driving rain, water pouring down his face as he spoke and then worked the crowd. He wanted it.

Or her husband in New Hampshire in 1992, (trying to make up for lying about sleeping with Gennifer Flowers) campaigning until his voice gave out and he couldn’t’ speak. He wanted it.

Both she and Trump are old. So, I don’t expect her to campaign like she is 45. But, she needs to step out. Tell us what she believes. Do several events a day.  Dive into the crowd and work rope lines till she’s shaken every hand. She’s gotta show us that she wants it.

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Of course, there is a double standard here.  Trump does an event a day. Rarely works a rope line or pops into a coffee shop.  Doesn’t sit down and talk to voters. And most nights flies back home to Trump Tower to sleep in his own bed.  But, he’s a would-be fascist leader, and history has selected Hillary as the only person who can stop him.

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My father ran for a local office in 1994. Township Supervisor.

Mid-morning on Election Day, my friend Jim and I were working the polls at the Dry Ridge Volunteer Fire Department, one of the bigger precincts in the township.  My father was making the rounds of the various precincts and pulled his pick-up into the Dry Ridge VFD parking lot. “What’s wrong with your dad? “ Jim asked, as we both noticed him limping across the parking lot, just dragging his left leg behind him.  I hustled over to meet him.

Throughout the election, Dad had in his pick up and I in my car, signs, wooden stakes, a staple gun, and a sledge hammer for either erecting or repairing yard signs.  These hammers were a foot or so long, with big hunks of lead at the top. Early on Election Day, Dad had been erecting signs near various precincts, and, at one such stop, the hammer slipped from his grasp and landed on his left foot.  It was May, and he was wearing canvas sneakers.   I don’t know if it broke his foot, but his big toe was swollen and bruised.

I sympathized with my dad’s pain, but, looking back across the parking lot at the busy polling station, the only solace I could offer was, “You aren’t allowed to break your toe today.”