Biden, the Tara Reade story, and the "poisoned chalice" problem

I've been reading lately about the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, which was the immediate precursor of the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. In March 1939, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin made a long speech to the Eighteenth Communist Party Congress, which included careful diplomatic signals that the USSR was seriously considering a diplomatic tilt to cooperation with Hitler Germany. In the speech he commented, "Politics are politics, as the old, case-hardened bourgeois diplomats say."

I've thought of that line while following the Tara Reade story. Reade is a former staff member in Joe Biden's Senate office who has made an allegation that Biden sexually assaulted her in the early 1990s. Here is a report by Ryan Grim, who first broke this story: New Evidence Supporting Credibility of Tara Reade's Allegation Against Joe Biden Emerges The Intercept 04/24/2020.

The relevance of the Stalin quote is not to compare Joe Biden with Hitler or anything ridiculous like that. But it's a colorful reminder that politics has never been and will never be a contest between divine beings. (Well, human politics, anyway!) As James Madison famously wrote in Federalist #51, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." But of course that's not our reality.

In our reality, the only two people with a credible possibility of being elected President in November are Joe Biden and Donald Trump. For most Democrats, for most people who consider themselves on the left, for most feminists, Biden is clearly the preferable candidate. He's "the best we can do" right now, a fact that gives current relevance to Steve Earle's protest song, Amerika V. 6.0 (The Best We Can Do). Supporting Biden over Trump, even enthusiastically supporting him (if that's possible!), is entirely valid and does not mean his supporters endorse or condone the conduct that Tara Reade alleges.

From the reporting I've seen, Reade's allegations are substantial and deserve to be treated seriously. At the same time, we know that the Republicans will use them as a political club, that the Democrats are unlikely to make an aggressive case against Trump over the various credible accusations against him for sexual misconduct, and that most Republicans voters apparently really don't care about Trump's personal misconduct. Or his public misconduct either.

Rebecca Traister examines the political dilemma that creates, particularly for the woman Biden chooses to be his Vice Presidential candidate, The Biden Trap The Cut 04/27/2020. She also summarizes the history of Reade's claims:

[P]art of what’s sickeningly clear is that if Biden remains the Democratic nominee, whichever woman gets the nod to be his running mate will wind up drinking from a poisoned chalice. Because the promise to choose a woman ensures that whoever she is, she will be forced to answer — over and over again — for Biden’s treatment of other women, including the serious allegations of assault leveled by Tara Reade. ...

And make no mistake, if Biden loses, regardless of his running mate, even as feminists are being criticized for hypocrisy in not condemning him more swiftly, it will also be feminists and women who are blamed for his loss, for encouraging an environment in which claims of sexual harm are taken seriously enough to damage a politician. [my emphasis]

Shaunna Thomas, the head of the feminist group Ultraviolet, posted on Facebook:

Krystal Ball reports on the story in Bombshell Joe Biden Tara Reade story forces liberal feminists to reckon with silence Rising/The Hill 04/28/2020:

I've followed Krystal Ball's commentry for a while and she is generally solid. At the same time, that clip above illustrates the tricky nature of a left-right comentators' pairing like hers with Saagar Enjeti. As the left side of the duo, she's here taking a position that, principled though it may be, is negative for the Democratic Presidential candidate.

While Saagar can and does use the same story in this clip to blast Democratic feminists for hyprocrisy, also making a point of dismissing their criticism of Brett Kavanaugh as having been transparently insincere. The "left" member of the due gets to be principled in criticizing her own side, while the "right" member also gets to criticize the left side while using the story to defend Republicans for their stance on the Kavanaugh case, as follows:

If you're one of those people who is ignoring this, or any of that, this cognitive dissidence in order to make a political choice and push a political outcome in order to get what you desire, and all that stuff you said during Brett Kavanaugh and all that other stuff when everyone was a Republican politician and not a Democratic one, sorry, you're a liar! And you always were! And that was the thing. We all, a lot of us knew that. .

I have found their reports informative and their discussions useful in teasing out thier implications. But this clip is also an illustration that his arrangement can be a kind of "poisoned chalice". Because the choice in November is almost certainly going to be between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

In other words, politics are politics, as the old, case-hardened bourgeois diplomats say.