Biden denies the assault charge

Since I've posted on the sexual assault accusation against Joe Biden by one of his former Senate staffers, who alleges an incident that occurred 27 years ago, I'll mention here that Biden has now publicly and personally denied that the incident occurred. (Trevor Hunnicutt and John Whitesides, Democrat Joe Biden says alleged sexual assault 'never happened' Reuters 05/01/2020)

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeit on their left-right news and commentary show, The Hill's Rising, reacted to the news, MSNBC presses Biden on allegation, misses the mark 05/01/2020. In this instance, both the "left" and "right" parts of the show seem downright enthusiastic in making the best possible case for the truth of the accuser's report.

I don't have anything new to add to what I've said about how this story is likely to play out in the Presidential campaign. It will clearly create some amount of awkwardness for the woman Biden picks as his running mate.

I would like to think this particular case would lead to some kind of improvement in the way the media and the political parties handle such issues. We can always hope.

In anything so high-stakes as a US Presidential election, fairness and justice for a story like this are likely to come up short. These are tough stories for anyone to evaluate realistically. Since we're talking about an alleged incident in which only two people were present, almost none of us will be able to form a realistic opinion about what happened in the absence of some strong contemporary confirmation coming to light. Outside of that, only someone with specialized training and experience in evaluating sexual assault testimony, like a therapist or police investigator, would be able to form some realistic opinion of what happened by talking to the two people who were in the room.

The fact is that when incidents like the one alleged in this case happen, they are a shock to the victim, who may be genuinely confused about what to do, along with feeling angry and afraid and ashamed. And in the case of a boss and an employee, there is a real power disparity and the perpetrator often has significant ability to retaliate professionally against the accuser. That is particularly so when the perpetrator is, say, a powerful US Senator or the head of a Hollywood movie studio.

Everyone's situation is different. But it is probably a good idea for anyone in that situation to at least make some kind of comtemporary record of what just happened. Because 20 or 30 years afterwards, you may be in a position to call the person to acocunt in some way. As we saw with Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein.

The lines of the partisan fight over Tara Reade take shape

The Democratic defenses of Biden over the Tara Reade accusation are piling up, from Nancy Pelosi to Kirstin Gillibrand.

Former prosecutor Michael Stern provides a lawyerly list of talking points, Why I'm skeptical about Reade's sexual assault claim against Biden: Ex-prosecutor USA Today 04/30/2020.

As I said in an earlier post, for most Democrats and most feminists, Biden is clearly the preferable candidate in November. Supporting Biden over Trump is entirely valid and does not mean his supporters endorse or condone the conduct that Tara Reade alleges, although declarations of accepting Biden's position are clearly dismissing her claims at some level. And nothing can stop the Trump campaign from cheerfully ignoring the many credible accusations against Trump while cynically trying to exploit Reade's claim.

Stern's argument shows why it's nearly impossible to *prosecute* a claim reported so long after the incident. And the time lag does make it harder to judge outside the legal context, too. Not least because people can scour decades of the accuser's life since the incident for things like saying something stupid about Vladimir Putin. Which I'm guessing would normally not be admissible in court during a trial.

But part of the Democratic and women's-rights narrative that developed in the wake of the Clarence Thomas hearings Biden presided over decades ago is that we need to understand that there is more to consider in judging claims like this than whether it can be proved in court beyond a reasonable doubt. What's not believable enough to send someone to prison could certainly be considered credible enough to influence support for a candidate or a judicial nominee.

When it comes to the politics of issues like this, I do think the Democrats need to develop a more coherent approach, knowing that Republicans will pretend to lose their minds over a consensual affair by a Democratic politician while they are also generally willing to say, "Oh, Roy Moore's a good ole boy, who cares what he did 30 years ago?"

The Democratic Senators' handling of the Al Franken case in 2017 is an example of what can go wrong. Kirstin Gillibrand took the lead in calling for his resignation without even the ethics investigation Franken had requested, but other Senators including Sanders and Warren also joined in. Gillibrand's resignation call is still on Facebook, in which she says among other things:

In politics, of course, the problem of sexual harassment and sexual assault is not limited to any one party. There have been Democrats and Republicans accused of misconduct, and I have no doubt that there will be more because Congress is not immune to this scourge. The question is what are we willing to do about it when courageous women and men come forward.

We have to rise to the occasion, and not shrink away from it, even when it’s hard, especially when it’s hard. That is what this larger moment is about. So, I have spent a lot of time reflecting on Senator Franken’s behavior. Enough is enough. The women who have come forward are brave and I believe them. While it’s true that his behavior is not the same as the criminal conduct alleged against Roy Moore, or Harvey Weinstein, or President Trump, it is still unquestionably wrong, and should not be tolerated by those of us who are privileged to work in public service.

As the mother of two young boys, we owe it to our sons and daughters to not equivocate, but to offer clarity. We should not have to be explaining the gradations between sexual assault, harassment and unwelcome groping. And what message do we send to our sons and daughters when we accept gradations of crossing the line? None of it is ok and none of it should be tolerated. [my emphasis]

I thought and said at the time that it struck me as ridiculous to suggest that there were no "gradations" between, say, telling an inappropriate dirty joke and actual sexual assault. Now Gillibrand is a potential VP pick for Biden, and she fully supports Biden's denial of Reade's charge. This was part of the point of Rebecca Traister's analysis that I linked earlier. that all this context creates a "poisoned chalice" situation for the woman that he picks for VP. Because in practice, she will be expected to flatly defend him on the Reade charges just like Gillibrand and Pelosi are doing now.

But they've got to learn how to frame their position on this subject better. It really strains credibility to say two years ago that you're declaring a zero-tolerance policy for any kind of sexual harassment including in your own party and then now say in effect, oh, you can't believe that b***h because she said something dorky about Vladimir Putin 25 years after she claimed she was seriously physically assaulted - this is not a good way to build credibility on this whole issue.

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.