W.J. Astore
Tara Reade’s allegations of sexual assault against Joe Biden have generated a spate of hypocrisy, special pleading, and revealing responses like Nancy Pelosi’s statement that “Joe Biden is Joe Biden” (touchy-feely with girls and women, in other words).
But this response by Tom Perez, head of the DNC, may be the most revealing of all, as quoted in The Guardian:
Senior Democrats continue to rally round Biden. On Sunday the party chair, Tom Perez, dismissed calls for the Democratic National Committee to launch an investigation.
Biden is an “open book” who has been thoroughly vetted, the former labor secretary told ABC’s This Week, adding: “[The Obama administration] looked at the entire history of Joe Biden, his entire career. If Barack Obama had any indication that there was an issue, Barack Obama would not have had him as his vice-president. [emphasis added]
“Barack Obama trusted Joe Biden. I trust Joe Biden. And those investigations have been done.”
There you have it. Believe women has morphed into believe Barack Obama, at least for accusations against Joe Biden. The saintly Obama wouldn’t have picked Joe as his VP if Joe wasn’t a great guy. Right?
Joe Biden has unequivocally denied Reade’s account of sexual assault in 1993. He says it didn’t happen — end of story. If so, why should the DNC fear an investigation, which could only exonerate Biden further, according to his own account? Why not search Biden’s sealed papers at the University of Delaware, the most likely repository for Reade’s complaint from 1993? (The National Archives wouldn’t have this complaint.) So far, Joe Biden is insisting that these papers remain sealed.
Tara Reade’s account has considerable corroborating evidence. There’s evidence to suggest she was effectively demoted within the Biden office after filing her complaint in 1993. Surely the DNC should seek the most thorough investigation before going all-in on Joe Biden. Right?
But the fix has been in since the very beginning. Joe Biden is the nominee, credible accusations be damned. After all, if Obama picked him, how can he be anything less than a great and wonderful guy?
Bracing Views 
Leave it to the Democrats to drink their own Kool-aid. Maybe we should have nominated Warren, after all I presume that she would be immune from the inevitable sexual Inquisition that any American male is subject to.
Nov. 3rd can’t get here fast enough!
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Mika hammered Biden pretty well on Morning Joe. She had him flailing. The Democrats are starting to resemble their counterparts in the MAGA crowd. Stick you head up your ass and defend your candidate at all costs.
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If Ms. Reade’s accusation is a fabrication, we must ask: what is her motivation?? Who is sponsoring her campaign against Biden? This info should get flushed out eventually. If the alleged assault is an imaginary event on her part, the “details” may well have grown more lurid with the passage of time. She says it happened in a quiet corridor with no one in sight to observe. Hard to imagine that in today’s world there wouldn’t be video surveillance of every nook and cranny of government buildings.
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It’s hard to believe she’s playing a long con from 1993. That she was effectively demoted in ’93, and that her mother called in to Larry King later that year, suggest that something bad happened that year.
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But if she was unable to obtain what she considered “justice” in the fairly immediate aftermath of such an event, what is her motivation to raise this ruckus now? Is it her personal belief that Biden is a menace to every female government employee whose path he may cross? How would that make him any different than the current incumbent who boasted he can “do anything” to women because he’s “a star”? (Though he places an asterisk to indicate he only grabs the pussies of women he finds especially physically attractive!) As I’ve made clear in previous comments, I am not a supporter of Biden’s candidacy, but logic forces me to emphasize this question of motivation. Naturally, the GOP is the entity potentially benefitting from women potential Biden voters being turned off by this accusation. But Republican operatives, like most GOPers, aren’t real good at appreciating irony! The irony of running such a smear campaign on behalf of their own misogynist incumbent!
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The sad part is Trump has (sort of) taken Biden’s side. You know Trump — “lots of women accuse powerful men falsely, just like they’ve all done to me, so I tend to believe Sleepy Joe here …”
Well, Trump is likely to be elected or rejected based mainly on coronavirus and the economy. The real impact of Tara Reade’s allegation is revealing all of the Democratic hypocrisy, rule-changing, and so on for Biden versus Kavanaugh. So when the next Republican comes along with a sordid past, we’ll be sure to hear, But what about Joe? Due process! Believe men until proven otherwise!
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The litmus test for GOP Federal Judicial nominees for some time now has been that they have to commit to opposing Roe v. Wade (whether this is done publicly or kept as a “wink-wink” matter between the nominee and GOP Senate leadership). Thus, yet again, women are at the center of the contentiousness: since the Reagan years, opposing a woman’s right to determine her own reproductive status has been THE bedrock-solid ideological plank of the Modern Republican Party. Yes, even the supposedly SACRED RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS is secondary to this issue! Women of Amerika, you have a lot of fight-back yet to wage! I am with you!!
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I’m responding to your point here, and also to a point in your original comment.
First, if Ms. Reade’s allegation is justified (and I make no judgment, yet, either way), it could be that she’s raising the ruckus now for one of two reasons: that sexual assault makes Biden morally reprehensible on several fronts, not just that of misogyny, and therefore, he’s not fit to sit in the Oval Office; or, that she finds Biden so unqualified in general, she’s using the only weapon she has to derail his candidacy.
Second, regarding video surveillance: the alleged assault took place in the early ’90s, so I don’t believe it would be at all unusual if, in those pre-9/11 days, there were no cameras in the halls.
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As I have been opining for a while now, Tara Reade’s assertions against Biden will NOT succeed in knocking him off the ballot. There is a chance, though, that they will turn off sufficient numbers of potential voters to allow Trump to cake-walk into his second term. Since the latter’s base seems to stand by their “man” no matter what, I see the same situation as last time shaping up in the Electoral College. “God save the republic!!”
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I too, make no judgement about her claim, but sexual assault in the early 1990s was not what sexual assault today is. The bar has been lowered. I would also suggest that what is considered sexual assault today (and even perhaps in the mid 90s) is not necessarily misogyny. A misunderstanding of non verbal communication is not misogyny.
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But of course, the issue is not one of miscommunication! It’s a matter of white male members of the elite class (business and politics) exercising an undeserved power over women. On a rare occasion, the sexes may be reversed, but women are riled up precisely because it’s overwhelmingly an issue of male privilege. Even an Ancient White Male like myself understands this!
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Like any woman who comes forward to accuse a political candidate of rape, Tara Reid has nothing to gain and everything to lose. Obviously, she’s not saying Trump isn’t a sexual predator as well — but he didn’t rape her. What did Monica Lewinsky, Christine Ford or Anita Hill gain from coming forward except a footnote in history for being a victim to a crime?
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One item worth recording. I was reading Rebecca Traister’s first book; she mentioned the dress code in the Senate was no slacks/pantsuits for women well into the ’90s. That Tara Reade was wearing a skirt when the alleged groping occurred was probably a product of this dress code. And yet more evidence of the casual sexism in Senate chambers traditionally dominated by men of a certain age.
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Not that Tara Reade’s case isn’t important—it is. But I think it’s a mistake to concentrate on hanging Joe Biden on a thing like that. He’s is such a provable skuzzbag on so many really vital issues, that overemphasis on his likely rape of Tara Reade draws too much attention away from his many, very grave, forms of awfulness. Obama was perfectly happy with (and complicit in) those, it might be pointed out, and so his clean bill of health for Biden should deeply condemn both of them. But the Democratic élites assume that no one can think ill of the saintly Obama, so they run this stunt. The same was the case for Kavanaugh. Focusing upon the sexual-misadventure allegations drew attention away from his really deep flaws as a prospective “Justice”—flaws that should have kept him out of the Supreme Court even were he a boy scout with respect to women. (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard published an excellent piece about Kavanaugh’s awfulness in the Telegraph.) Al Capone should have been sent up for murder and mayhem, not just for tax evasion. So, by all means, stand up for Tara Reade and expose Biden for the disgusting letch that he is. But let’s keep our eyes firmly fixed on his even deeper failings (and I don’t take rape lightly; but mass murder is worse). And keep also in mind that the American public is not very critical when it comes to being a sexually predatory jerk. Bill Clinton, for example, was never really called on it by the electorate.
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Yes, I agree.
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“….so his clean bill of health for Biden should deeply condemn both of them.”
Excellent point; very well stated. You make an eloquent case for looking at the big picture. I would argue that the same thing happened during Trump’s impeachment proceedings. Focusing on one act, however disgusting or illegal it may be, puts all the eggs in one basket, so to speak, and weakens the overall case.
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The New York Times is at least airing the suggestion that Democrats can do better than Joe Biden:
Here’s the conclusion:
Believing women, that oft-rehearsed exhortation, must mean taking action if it’s to mean anything. A thorough and fully transparent investigation is critical, but nothing produced by any inquiry will entirely settle the question. It is still possible — if not likely — that all of this will simply fade away, and that Mr. Biden will continue his campaign without ever submitting to a full accounting, precisely the sort of thing #MeToo was meant to prevent.
But it is also possible that this won’t just go away, and that it will demoralize voters and place Mr. Biden at a disadvantage against Mr. Trump in the general election, despite the fact that Mr. Trump has a damning list of accusers alleging sexual offenses. For a candidate mainly favored for his presumed electability and the perception of empathy and decency, that’s a serious liability. To preserve the strides made on behalf of victims of sexual assault in the era of #MeToo, and to maximize their chances in November, Democrats need to begin formulating an alternative strategy for 2020 — one that does not include Mr. Biden.
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Had read this article, and I agree with the conclusions. However, in sifting through reader comments, I saw that, by and large, posters continued to support Biden, even when they conceded that he’s a flawed choice. The mantra is, “Beat Trump at all costs, no matter who we have to put up with as an alternative.” Also, many people bashed Ms. Bruenig as merely a “sour grapes” Bernie supporter.
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I’ll say this again, for the record: unless ‘Uncle Joe’ collapses from a major stroke or some such ailment soon, he absolutely will be on the ballot. The DNC is simply incapable of saying “Whoa, we made a mistake! We’re pulling this guy from the ticket!” As would be the GOP (incapable) in a similar situation. Indeed, they left Trump as their banner carrier last time, right? No one, including The Donald, expected him to actually win, but we’re talking about acting on principles here. Neither Establishment party is capable of acting in such a manner. It’s all about the pragmatism of getting back in or retaining an office.
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Yes, I think you’re right, Greg.
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More on the DNC, Tom Perez, and the “vetting” process
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How can we “clear” — or exonerate — someone of doing something for which no one ever convicted them in the first place? The headline for the above video simply assumes a sentence of “guilt” when no court of any standing has rendered any such judgment. It reminds me of that famous passage in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll:
. . . “Let the jury consider their verdict,” the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.
“No, no!” said the Queen. “Sentence first–verdict afterward.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” said Alice loudly. “The idea of having the sentence first!”
The mere allegation of “wrongdoing” (whatever that may mean) does not, in and of itself, constitute “evidence,” much less an undisputed “guilty” verdict. “Hearsay” — what someone said that someone else said — does not constitute acceptable evidence, either. More fundamentally, no one has to prove their innocence. On the contrary, those who allege wrongdoing on the part of others bear the burden of proof. The accused has no responsibility for assisting his or her attackers in proving their case, even by the utterance of a single word (see the US Supreme Court’s famous 5th Amendment “Miranda” decision). If the prosecution (or persecutors) can’t do that by themselves, then they deserve to have their case dismissed out of hand with the very real prospect of slander and libel suits brought against them for “malicious defamation.”
As Michael Tracey writes in his exhaustively detailed (in my opinion) Twitter feed:
@mtracey “One of the big problems with “Believe Women” is that like many overly-simplistic slogans, it was always poorly-suited to addressing a multifaceted, ethically complicated set of issues. Thinking in slogans always makes you dumber”
So I’ll pass on this particular video. Thanks anyway for the link.
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You’re right, Mike. I used “exonerate” too. I should say — not in a legal sense. But in the court of public opinion.
Yes, “believe women” — read as, “no matter what” — never made logical sense. You might say, however, it was a corrective to “believe powerful men and all their powerful friends and media hacks and lawyers and the like.” Now, of course, the Democrats are espousing the latter — believe the powerful man, no matter what. So we’re back at square one. And many so-called feminists and #MeToo people are bending over backwards to believe Biden.
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Trump being Trump, i.e. both crafty and dishonest:
But Trump himself, trailing Biden in numerous polls, has been uncharacteristically hesitant to weigh in. In an interview with the conservative radio host Dan Bongino, he said if the accusations were false, Biden should deny them.
“Just go out and fight it, it’s one of those things,” Trump advised. “I’ve been a total victim of this nonsense, false accusations.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/04/joe-biden-tara-reade-senate-records-reject-request
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Those opinion polls may well prove to be just as “reliable” as in 2016! And it’s quite possible that election will replay this time, with Biden perhaps winning the popular vote but losing in the beloved Electoral College. At this stage, I’m not going to allow myself to harbor ANY confidence that we will be rid of Trump come January. They say “Hope is not a strategy,” but hope is all we have at this point. The Democratic candidate is wanting in oh-so-many ways, as we’ve been enumerating here, but The Donald really, really needs to exit the stage.
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I’d like to cordially take issue with a comment above wherein someone claimed that Monica Lewinsky belongs to that group of women who have “come forward” to accuse a politically prominent male person of “sexual” “improprieties,” or some such thing. Not true.
As a matter of fact, Monica Lewinsky never accused President Bill Clinton of any sort of sexual misbehavior. In reality, her “best friend,” Linda Tripp, illegally taped their telephone conversations — in which Ms Lewinsky “confidentially” detailed her consensual adult sexual activities with President Clinton — and then turned the tapes over to Special Persecutor Kenneth Starr who selectively leaked them to the press so as to inflict maximum political damage on Bill Clinton. At the conclusion of her humiliating testimony, the grand jury foreman asked Ms Lewinsky if she had any final thoughts on what had just transpired. Monica burst into tears and wailed: “I hate Linda Tripp.” From this tawdry episode and much other life experience I feel safe in enunciating a general principle to the effect that, No woman has a worse enemy than her best friend. And if you don’t believe that, ask Monica Lewinksy what she thinks of Linda Tripp.
To set the historical record straight, the female accuser of Bill Clinton went by the name of Paula Jones who alleged that Bill Clinton had said or suggested something “sexual” and “inappropriate” in a Little Rock hotel room eleven years previous when Mr Clinton served as Governor of Arkansas. None of this tabloid “scandal” stuff had anything to do with Bill Clinton’s presidential administration of the US government bureaucracy. Yet even after the Republicans’ farcical Perjury-Trap/”Fellatio” Impeachment failed, President Clinton continued on with his work trashing FDR’s New Deal and doing the Republicans’ dirty work for them even as they continued to abuse him with epithets like “Slick Willie,” demanding concession after concession of the sort that Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell likes to jeeringly call “Clintonian back flips in our direction.” Personally, I could never understand why the Republicans didn’t canonize Bill Clinton as one of their party’s patron saints, certainly one on the level of Ronald Reagan. But I digress . . .
I just thought that Monica Lewinsky deserves better in life than having people confuse her with Paula Jones.
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Talk of Bill Clinton reminds me that he’s the only president I’ve met in the flesh. I think it was in 1993. Clinton came to Oxford and wanted to meet all American students enrolled there, so all us Yanks trekked over to Rhodes House and shook his hand.
Interestingly, what I remember most was how excited many of the students were to catch a glimpse of Hillary. Back then, and before various scandals, young women in particular identified with Hillary as a modern First Lady, not like staid old Barbara Bush or astrology-devotee Nancy Reagan, for example. Hillary had a considerable amount of good will in those days, but a lot of that she squandered, as did Bill himself.
Bill and Hillary basically ruled as moderate Republicans, or course, which didn’t stop real Republicans from hating them.
What I’d really like to see is a real Democrat as a candidate for the presidency, but the closest we had to that in 2016 and 2020 was an Independent, Bernie Sanders, and we all know what happened to him.
The Democratic Party of my youth, of the 1970s, that paid some respect to working people, no longer exists. Candidates like Kerry and Biden and Hillary prove it.
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Strong article at The Nation that asks us to take Tara Reade seriously:
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/tara-reade-biden-allegations/
The article’s concluding paragraphs:
Biden, of course, has denied Reade’s claims—though not in a way that inspired much confidence. (He said on Morning Joe on May 1, “I am absolutely positive that no one that I am aware of ever was been made aware of any complaint—a formal complaint—made by or a complaint by Tara Reade against me at the time this allegedly happened 27 years ago or until the—I announced for president well I guess it was in April or May of this year. I know of no one who was aware that any complaint was made. Nor has… No, no, that’s it.”) At the same time, he refused point blank to release records containing Tara Reade’s name from his University of Delaware Senate records—claiming, to interviewer Mika Brzezinski, that Reade’s alleged complaint about sexual harassment would instead be filed in the National Archives. This claim has subsequently been denied by an archives spokesperson. And even if Biden sincerely believed it at the time, why not permit the relevant University of Delaware papers to at least be looked at?
If this was a court of law, and we were jurors, then it would be appropriate to deem Biden innocent until he’d been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But a presidential campaign is not a court of law, and different standards of evidence apply: After all, we’re not contemplating convicting this man, or taking away his civil liberties. We’re contemplating not believing his story—knowing, moreover, that he has lied many times before—and potentially withholding from him the chance to run for highest office on this basis. Although this would undoubtedly be a very serious matter, the accusations he is facing are yet more so.
I, of course, advocate voting for Biden over Trump, the allegations against the former notwithstanding, if we end up facing that grim choice. (Trump has been credibly accused of even worse sexual crimes, and sexual misconduct by many more women—not to mention the fact that he represents an existential threat to many vulnerable populations and, indeed, the planet.) But we are not there yet. Replacing Biden at this stage would not be easy; it may nonetheless be called for.
And I confess I am deeply angry that we are in this position. We did not have to be. We have known all along that Biden was sexually inappropriate, lecherous, and handsy. Had we as voters, and had the Democratic Party, taken this as seriously as we all ought to, we wouldn’t be in this mess now. It is not too much to ask that the next president of the United States adhere to the highest moral standards when it comes to his treatment of women. And if we don’t give the supposedly small things the weight they deserve, then the big things will often loom large in precisely this way. They are part of a pattern we simply can’t afford to ignore any longer.
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In the interest of sticking to facts, it appears that there is some Senate regulation that prohibits release of the documents being discussed (reporting by CNN and/or NY Times). Is this terribly convenient for Biden, so he can say “Hey, I requested these files be examined for any such complaint, but Senate rules won’t allow it!”? And he HAS proclaimed that he made this request. So, both aspects may be factually true: that he requested this, and that rules forbid such a probe (no sexual pun intended!). Our legislative bodies do have some strange rules. Personally, I hanker for repeal of the prohibition against calling a fellow Senator a low-life within the Senate Chamber!! Bring on the fistfights, a la the Taiwan Parliament on occasion!
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Thanks for the thoughtful and lengthy reply, Bill, but I have to disagree about the wisdom of willingly suspending disbelief in the so-called “Court of Public Opinion” on the specious grounds that “a presidential campaign is not a court of law, and different standards of evidence apply.” Standards? What “standards”?
In the present instance, someone has accused Joe Biden of committing a crime, not just sponsoring a piece of ill-considered legislation or getting his son a cushy job on the board of some Ukrainian energy corporation (nepotism). Political election campaigns, for their part, typically involve differences of opinion about thoroughly venal and mundane matters, or at least the cosmetic appearance of such “differences.” But those who commit statutory criminal acts — or, at least the poor who do — face the very real possibility of arrest, indictment, trial, conviction, and sentencing to long prison terms. So what does it say about someone’s concept of “standards” (let alone their notion of “crime”) that they would allege criminal actions on the part of another person but then cavalierly state that “after all, we’re not contemplating convicting this man, or taking away his civil liberties.”
Really? You seriously do not contemplate convicting this man and taking away his civil liberties? Why don’t you? And what makes “this” man different from other men facing similar accusations? How can you simultaneously believe that (1) someone committed a crime but that (2) he should not have to face the same harsh criminal justice system that other citizens — even mentally incompetent and truly innocent ones — must endure every day? That sounds to me like the title and subject of Glenn Greenwald’s book: With Liberty and Justice for SOME: How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful (2011).
I’ve checked, and the District of Columbia has many statutory laws against “Sexual Assault” which — depending upon many gradations of “type” and “severity” — can result in lengthy prison terms for the criminal perpetrators (which include homosexual Catholic priests who sodomize underage boys). Unfortunately for the present accuser of Joe Biden, the Statute of Limitations requires filing a criminal complaint within 15 years of the alleged incident for the most severe and violent “rape” accusations, and 10 years for “less severe” cases of “harassment.” Unfortunately for the present accuser of Joe Biden and her sponsors, her claim that the alleged “assault” took place 27 years ago, makes criminal prosecution moot in any event.
So what does the woman accuser (and her sponsors) hope to accomplish by alleging the crime of “rape” long after any possibility of either a criminal conviction or case dismissal — i.e., “justice” — has passed and gone? I suggest that the New York Times article referenced above: namely, “Democrats, It’s Time to Consider a Plan B” rather baldly reveals the true motivation behind these tabloid attacks on the former Senator and Vice President. But more on this later, time and energy permitting.
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When I mentioned this so-called “Plan B” to my wife, she corrected me. A “Plan B” only goes into effect in the case where “Plan A” has failed, she said, but “Plan A” (to use Joe Biden to deny Bernie Sanders and/or Tulsi Gabbard the nomination) clearly succeeded. Therefore, we should more properly speak now of Part 2of The Plan To Secure The Nomination For Some Woman As Yet Not Officially In The Running. Since Part 1 successfully eliminated Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, Part 2 will now eliminate Joe Biden. How Part 3 will manage the last-minute switch to the insider-selected nominee remains a bit dicey, but do-able, since the eventual nominee only has to qualify as NOT TRUMP AND NOT DEAD. And even the second of these “qualifications” might not prove necessary to Democratic Party voters in November. An embalmed cadaver NOT NAMED TRUMP would probably do for “interim” President just as long as everyone knows who really wears the pants in the White House. Former President Bill Clinton can explain from bitter experience how that “co-president” thing works.
As usual, though, Michael Tracey lays it out nicely on his Twitter feed. He first quotes the following tweet by a woman professor named Kate Manne:
@kate_manne My hope is it will put Joe Biden’s presumptive nomination on the line. The #metoo movement is bigger than Biden. https://twitter.com/CornellCAS/sta
. . . to which Mr Tracey replies:
@mtracey The author of this piece states that her hope is for Biden to be prevented from getting the Dem nomination as a result of the allegation. She favors this outcome, because she wishes to enshrine the underlying premises of MeToo — i.e., “Believe Women”
Pretty obvious the operative political motivations here masquerading as phony concerns over allegedly “criminal” (sexual) activities on the part of Joe Biden decades previous to the present. I suggest that the New York Times article referenced above rather baldly reveals the true motivation behind these tabloid attacks on the former Senator and Vice President. Someone apparently does not consider the Democratic Party primary over and concluded. Unmasking and exposing these persons, their agendas (if not their genders), and their tactics ranks much higher, in my estimation, than any further inconclusive babbling about what people claim to “believe” about salacious “sexual” scandals in Washington, D.C., otherwise known as “Hollywood for ugly people.”
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“You know the score, pal: if you’re not cop, you’re little people.”
So saith M. Emmet Walsh in “Blade Runner,” and that’s what makes Biden different from you, me or anyone else facing a similar accusation: Joe’s from inside The Beltway, we aren’t. That’s the only thing I can figure.
It’s the same unwritten code that allows someone to refuse to testify before Congress or for someone else – let’s say a President – to “block” their testimony before Congress. That’s contempt of Congress for you, me, or anyone else from outside The Beltway, and an opportunity to interact with Federal Marshals.
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butsudanbill–Quite true, but an asterisk is needed: If “the System” was functioning as designed oh so many years ago, a certain POTUS would not be able to get away with denying witnesses and documents to the legislative branch with utterly BOGUS claims of Executive Privilege! Claims that would almost certainly survive a test at SCOTUS given the latter’s current composition. Hmmm, POTUS, BOGUS, SCOTUS. Sort of a rhyme scheme there. “The System” has been corrupt from Day One, but now it can’t even carry out minimally sensible policies/actions.
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As we think about Joe Biden’s reliability or truthfulness, we might want to consider his full record, including his record of lies:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/03/democrats-you-really-do-not-want-to-nominate-joe-biden
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If the DNC was to replace Biden as candidate, I believe I would faint for first time since I picked up a weird virus around 1995 that caused people to inexplicably pass out. Biden is a sorry-assed (old Army lingo resurfaces!) enuf candidate, but how could the Dems expect to be viewed credibly with what I believe would be a historically unprecedented maneuver?? (That is, one conducted in a smoky back room BEFORE a national convention.) Do you think it would improve their chances in November–“Oh look, they did the right thing!” No, no, no. They would then look hopelessly foolish for running Biden in the first place! An opinion many of us already hold, of course!
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The Democratic Party Establishment cares only about its own hold on power and the ready access to billionaire-donor campaign contributions — distributed in the House by Nancy Pelosi and in the Senate by Chuck Schumer — that such power brings. What “the people with the pitchforks” think (in the words of ingrate President Obama after the pitchfork-wielding proles put him in the White House) does not matter to the DNC and other party insiders. “They [meaning the progressive Left] have nowhere else to go,” as Bill Clinton disdainfully proclaimed many years ago.
So if the DNC wants to ditch Joe Biden [Part 2 of their Wagnerian Master Plan for Gotterdammerung II: The Twilight of the Girls] they will do so in a heartbeat and “reason” that the gullible and browbeaten voters of their party will either not remember why some of them voted for Joe in the early primaries, or care that he has disappeared, even if they do. They only voted for NOT TRUMP in the truncated primaries and anyone designated a “Democrat” who answers to that description will get their votes in November.
Of course, the DNC tried this same gambit in 2016 and it failed miserably, but perhaps the Corona virus will knock off Trump for the Democrats in any event. And if they “lose” again, the Democrats in Congress will simply go on passing Trump’s tax cuts and Corporate bailouts while confirming his judicial appointments, just as they have for the last three-and-a-half years. They don’t care if they “win.” They only care that they get paid. And the billionaire donor class will see that they get their pitiful scraps fallen from off the Republican Party’s Banquet Table.
Buy some Republicans. They’ll shout ‘GAWD Bless!”
Rent a few Democrats. They’ll lose for less.
All things considered, I really have a hard time thinking that the DNC has, in fact, chosen it’s nominee for this years presidential election. That just doesn’t seem part of the “Believe Women” campaign plan.
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I carry no brief for Joe Biden and would never vote for him under any circumstances. He has a horrible political record and so in no way do I credit him with any degree of “reliability or truthfulness.” But this does not mean that I will automatically and credulously credit his current female accuser with reliability or truthfulness, either. She and her boosters have given me no reason to do so.
As you know, I voted for Tulsi Gabbard in the California Democratic Party primary and even contributed small sums of money to her campaign. I continued to support her right up until the moment that she dropped out of the campaign and began babbling corporate-party nonsense about Joe Biden’s “good heart” and how she supports him against President Donald Trump (who also lies, just to keep in practice, just so he won’t forget how).
Now I plan to change my voter registration back to the Green Party where I should have let it remain. But none of this means that I have to swallow a pack of lies from women any more than I would swallow them from men. All political candidates, regardless of gender or skin color, have an equal right to my hard-earned skepticism. For example, you claim in your article:
“[The accusing woman’s] account has considerable corroborating evidence. There’s evidence to suggest she was effectively demoted within the Biden office after filing her complaint in 1993.”
“Suggestion” and speculative inference as to operative motives aside, Michael Tracey says:
@mtracey “[The accusing woman’s] description of the complaint she claimed she filed in 1993 has now changed significantly. And in 2019, she told the AP that she walked into the relevant Senate personnel office, but “chickened out” and left.”
I detect a discrepancy in the two accounts of what the accusing woman said that she did in 1993 and what she actually did in 1993. Other contradictory narratives continue to “evolve” and “mutate” as such things tend to do. So I’ll remain unconvinced. I don’t like bullshit shovelled at me, no matter who does the shovelling.
And what does 1993 have to do with 2020, anyway? Instead of Bill Clinton bombing and sanctioning Iraq, we have the bombing and sanctioning that Barack Obama inherited from Deputy Dubya Bush and which Donald Trump has continued and exacerbated in his turn. Joe Biden’s dementia in 2020 seems far more important an issue than what this accusing woman claims he did with his finger almost three decades ago. I mean, instead of taking away Joe Biden’s car keys, the Democratic Party — including Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard — wants to put him in the cockpit of a Boeing 737 full of passengers with the cheery send-off: “All clear for take-off, captain!” What fucking insanity! If Democrats haven’t rejected “Senior Moment” Joe Biden for a lifetime of corruption, war-mongering, and creeping cognitive incompetence, then why should I care if some frustrated women greasy-pole climbers want to score a few cheap points off the doddering old geezer while he can’t tell his wife from his sister.
As I have noted previously, I went through this same “Precious Puritan Peacocks on Parade” nonsense back during the two Bawl and Pillory Clinton administrations (not to mention the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court judicial confirmation hearings) and see no need to subject myself to anything like it ever again, other than as a masochistic exercise in “keeping my head while all about me are losing theirs and blaming it on me” (to paraphrase Rudyard Kipling). Injecting anything to do with “sex” into a political campaign guarantees that nothing remotely resembling a rational discussion will ever take place, precisely because the two right-wing factions of the Corporate Duopoly would never countenance one.
So, will Joe Biden go quietly, like a good little stalking horse, or will he put up a pathetic struggle until the Wonder Women in Waiting wheel him out the back door of the Convention wearing a straight-jacket and trying to remember the name of the President he worked for from 2008-2016?
Something tells me that the Democrats have already thrown in the towel on this one, leaving it up to a viral pandemic to dispose of Donald Trump, if such the fates decree. Otherwise, vicious score-settling among and between virtue-signalling rival party constituencies seems the order of the day, week, and month.
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Again. Why these accusations now? Why not earlier, during the actual primary voting, when no one bothered to criticize Joe Biden for these alleged “crimes” against “women.” Why did this woman accuser and her women sponsors not “come forward” when she could have wounded Joe Biden and helped prevent his nomination in the first place? She has had 27 years to bring up these charges, and could have done so during any one of Mr Biden’s many campaigns for elective office (Senator and Vice President, etc) . This woman accuser could have even helped one of the other female candidates get the nomination. So why pass up all these many opportunities to smear a little mud on Joe when it might have made a difference?
No. I refuse to buy something never offered for sale when fresh but only after it has grown stale and past its shelf life. Too many good reasons to doubt the “sincerity” and “authenticity” of this woman accuser, not to mention all the other women candidates for the presidency this year who didn’t offer a peep of criticism for Old Joe which they would have eagerly done if they really wanted to win the nomination for themselves.
Same for Bernie Sanders who not only failed to criticize Joe Biden for the alleged woman-groping but who kept volunteering how much he liked “his friend” Joe Biden whom he swore “could beat Trump.” All this while stupidly falling for that red-baiting Russia-gate farce that only wound up back in his own face courtesy of billionaire vanity candidate Mike Bloomberg.
But suddenly the Democrats have discovered that they want somebody other than Joe Biden now? Horse shit. Someone else always lusted after the presidency, but only for herself and “First Gentleman, Bill”. Unfortunately for She’s-With-Her, she couldn’t come out in the open and campaign for the nomination because of her awesome unpopularity in so much of the country. So she has had to hide until Joe Biden first took out all the other candidates. Now this woman accuser will hopefully take out Joe Biden. Then a “virtual” convention (with no actual delegates attending because of The Virus) will choose to nominate . . . you know . . . her and another woman (neither named “Trump”) as the “historic” “first all-woman ticket” selected by . . . well . . . somebody.
This could actually happen.
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Hillary 2020. #HillaryToo #BelieveHillary
It’s her turn, dammit! 🙂
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Hillary2020, eh? I publicly “entertained” this possibility earlier in the year, during the Dems’ “How many clowns can fit in this VW Beetle?” charade. At this late stage in the game, I think it likelier Michelle O. would be asked to come to the rescue (and man, do they need help, obviously!) of the party. But I continue to believe she would firmly resist the invitation. She is pursuing other interests. Hello, Gov. Inslee? Beto?? What’re you guys doing the next four years?
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Why always a double standard for Democrats and Liberals when it suits them. If he is innocent, unseal the document of the complaint. An honest man has nothing then to hide. Culture has changed. He clearly didn’t get the memos 30 yrs ago that touching in the work place is and could be sexual harassment. I am now a nurse, but I also hold a BA in business. I worked for a prominent law firm while in college. That is approximately 35 yrs ago when I was doing my business degree. These behaviors the Mr. Biden exhibits just in the public were a no, no back then. Why didn’t he learn. Women do not forget sexual harassment, ever. . You may suppress it, but the memory of it and how it made you feel, does not go away. Mr. Biden was in his 50’s at the time. I believe Tara has her true memories of an event, assault. Mr. Biden doesn’t recall because she most likely was insignificant to him at the time. Having had a similar incident myself at the age of 18, trust me you do not forget.
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Tara Reade’s story:
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