It was obvious for a long time that the #MeToo movement had been hijacked for political purposes, but Tara Reade’s sexual misconduct claims against Joe Biden have really exposed the sham.
For the first time, Biden publicly addressed on Friday Reade’s accusation that in 1993, while working for Biden’s Senate office, he pressed her against a wall, put his hand up her skirt, and penetrated her with his fingers against her will.
In an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Biden denied the accusation, as his presidential campaign has done in the past, and said he was asking the National Archives to release any official complaint Reade may have filed, which she says she did. “Look, this is an open book,” he said. “There’s nothing for me to hide. Nothing at all.”
But when confronted with the fact that Biden had held a different position on accusations of misconduct just two years ago during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the former vice president got slippery.
“Look, from the very beginning, I’ve said believing women means taking the claims seriously when she steps forward and then vet it,” he said. “Look into it. That’s true in this case as well.”
That’s not what Biden said. What he had said in 2018 about Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, was, “You’ve got to start out with the presumption that at least the essence of what she’s talking about is real.”
That is the exact same position articulated by 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton: “I think that when someone makes the claim, they come forward, they should be believed.”
Pressed on whether he could see the inconsistency in his standard for allegations of misconduct, Biden wouldn’t admit what everyone watching just witnessed, which is the complete evolution of the Democratic Party from “believe all women” to “vet every claim.”
Whaddayaknow. That’s the standard Republicans have been trying to apply all along, a standard that is otherwise known as “the presumption of innocence.”
There is more evidence to Reade’s claims than there were to Blasey Ford’s.
Ford couldn’t find a single person to corroborate her account contemporaneously, and to this day, there is no evidence that she even met Kavanaugh. Reade, who we know was an aide in Biden’s office, had several, including a former neighbor who went on the record and admits that even though she believes it happened, she still plans on supporting Biden for president.
Is that enough to convict Biden of a crime? No. But is Biden’s standing as the party’s nominee enough to make Democrats start believing in due process for men accused of sexual misconduct? Absolutely.
