There’s perhaps nothing more appalling in politics than a prominent politician receiving special treatment while actively seeking to deny the rights of his constituents. And that’s exactly what presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is currently doing with his rejection of the Trump administration’s Title IX reforms, which restore due process for college men accused of sexual assault.
After former Biden staffer Tara Reade accused the former vice president of having sexually assaulted her in 1993, he emphatically denied it. Meanwhile, Reade has since provided at least two strong examples of contemporaneous corroboration, making her account more likely, but not proving it happened. Biden denies the charge unequivocally, and his Democratic allies have almost all backed him in his denial.
Setting aside for a moment the gross hypocrisy on display here, given that most of these same Democrats wanted to deem Brett Kavanaugh guilty in a similar situation with even less evidence, this standard is actually fair enough. A man such as Biden, with a decorated career in public life who has never previously faced such an accusation, certainly deserves the benefit of the doubt in any fair process.
But what isn’t fair — no, what is deeply morally reprehensible — is that Biden is simultaneously promising to revoke that benefit of the doubt from young men who face similar charges.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Wednesday announced the Trump administration’s final new rules for Title IX, restoring due process and justice to a campus sexual assault disciplinary system of kangaroo courts that trampled the rights of the accused during the Obama-Biden years. DeVos’s new regulations restore basic principles of fairness such as the right to cross-examine one’s accuser, requiring colleges to not have single-party investigators who get to declare guilt on their own, and ending the ridiculous practice wherein sometimes charges were brought against the accused despite the alleged victim’s insistence they should not be.
Naturally, Biden (a key champion of the Obama administration’s unfair rules) denounced DeVos’s pro-due-process reforms emphatically. He called the rules an attempt “shame and silence” sexual assault survivors, insisting that “it’s wrong … and it will be put to a quick end in January 2021, because as president, I’ll be right where I always have been throughout my career — on the side of survivors, who deserve to have their voices heard, their claims taken seriously and investigated, and their rights upheld.”
That’s funny. When Biden wanted the benefit of the doubt against his accuser, he was simply asking to be treated fairly. But for college students to receive the same rights is suddenly an attack on survivors — or something.
Suffice it to say, this is hypocrisy of the highest order.
Reason’s Robby Soave, who recently wrote an excellent book on campus issues, concluded that “if the allegation against Biden were being decided by the kind of adjudication system that he helped enshrine on college campuses, it’s quite likely that he would be found guilty.”
Indeed, he would. Let’s hope voters see Biden’s position for the gross double standard that it is.
