Accusations of hypocrisy fly following Biden sexual assault allegation
Concerns are growing about Joe Biden’s candidacy following an allegation of sexual assault in 1993 by Tara Reade. The former Biden aide alleges that while working for him in his senate office in 1993, Biden sexually assaulted her pushing her up against a wall, reaching under her skirt, and penetrating her with his fingers.
Biden has flatly denied the allegation and gone on TV to defend himself. But the story has continued to grow.
Reade had surfaced before as one a number of women who complained earlier during Biden’s primary campaign that he had in the past made them uncomfortable through unwanted touching. Still, no more serious allegations followed. Biden vowed to be more mindful of women’s personal space, and many were inclined to chalk this up to an unfortunate downside of Biden’s famously touchy-feely nature. This is, after all, a man who used to massage Obama’s shoulders. The story faded.
Now the allegations have come back with a vengeance. The story has transformed from a complaint about conduct, to a specific complaint about sexual assault. Witnesses have also come forward – including Reade’s brother, two of her friends, and a former neighbour – to state that Reade had previously told them about the incident in confidence. A recording has also surfaced in which a woman, who Tara Reade identified as her mother, calling in to Larry King Live in 1993 to ask for advice about her daughter who had had “problems” with a prominent Senator, but was reluctant to go to the press “out of respect for him”.
The hunt for evidence continues. Biden has called on the National Archives to release a report Reade says she made to the congressional personnel office, though Reade says she omitted the claim of assault in this report out of fear. However, so far Biden has resisted calls to allow access to his Senatorial office records – something which if opened some fear would allow not just a search for documents concerning Reade but a general fishing expedition for anything embarrassing.
In the meantime, the response is depressingly predictably, and has broken down broadly along political lines.
Many Democrats have furiously dismissed Reade’s claims, questioning her character and motivations. They have pointed to how Reade has told different stories at different times, that she had made positive comments about Biden in the years following the alleged incident, her apparent support for Biden’s primary opponent Bernie Sanders, a strange essay she wrote in 2018 praising Vladimir Putin, and allegations that she stole from a non-profit she was working at. They also point that Biden’s background has previously been rigorously vetted – not least by the Obama campaign team before they chose Biden as Barack Obama’s running mate in 2008.
Yet a growing number of figures in the Democratic party and on the left have grown increasingly concerned as the allegations gained steam, exhibiting a mix of genuine moral scruples and political calculation. They point out that sexual assault victims often take time to tell the fully story out of embarrassment or fear. They also accuse Democrat’s defending Biden of abandoning supposed commitments to crack down on sexual assault and take these sorts of allegations seriously.
In this, critics of Biden on the left overlap with conservative criticisms as well. While Republicans by and large do not seem to have come to a consensus about whether they believe Reade or not, they have been quick to accuse the Democrats of hypocrisy.
Still smarting from the Brett Kavanaugh hearing, which saw Democrats use allegations by Christine Blasey Ford that Kavanaugh had of sexual assaulted her in 1982 to try and derail his Supreme Court nomination, conservatives note how much more reluctant Democrats are to impose the same standards on Biden. The hypocrisy seems even more pronounced to them given how Biden lead the charge to impose new guidelines about how American universities should deal with sexual assault – which critics have argued often fails to allow the accused the right to defend themselves.
Regardless of the truth of the matter, which some more thoughtful advocates for Reade have noted will never be fully known, the allegations threaten to seriously damage Biden’s run.
Biden’s appeal to many Democrats has been based on the view that he is a safe pair of hands electorally, plus his apparent personal decency and likeability standing in stark contrast to Trump. Many Democrats see the path to victory going through Republican voting suburbs where they have recently made inroads among white college-educated women put off by Trump’s grotesqueries.
A sexual assault allegation threatens to blow a hole in both of these.
Some are suggesting that in light of the allegation and its potential political consequences the Democrats should start considering replacing Biden as their nominee. Yet, this threatens to set off an even bigger political blow out.
For many the obvious replacement for Biden would be his closest competitor Sanders. The problem is Sanders is widely disliked, and seen as an electoral liability, by the Democratic power brokers who would negotiate such an arrangement. Yet, replacing Biden with a non-Sanders candidate would risk further alienating the Sanders wing of the party who were unhappy at best with Biden’s nomination, and deeply suspicious of the Democratic establishment.
What happens next is unclear. Had the allegations surfaced earlier Biden may well have been forced to exit the race – the Democrats did after all drive out rising star Senator Al Franken over far milder allegations.
However, with the Democrats facing their highest stakes election in living memory, electoral calculations will probably decide what happens. Given that Biden staying and Biden leaving both seem unpalatable options, it is unlikely the Democratic party will be inclined to rock the boat further, and will hope that partisanship will let Biden borrow some of the Teflon immunity that has let Trump brazen out his multiple scandals. In the end it seems politics make hypocrites of us all.