When it came to the fate of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, a credible sexual assault allegation alone, even absent any evidence or corroboration, was enough for most Democrats to cry “believe women” and demand the Senate reject Kavanaugh’s nomination. Now that it’s Joe Biden who faces a similar sexual assault allegation, Democrats must hold their party’s presumptive nominee to the same standard — or reveal themselves as cynical hypocrites once and for all.
A former Biden staffer who worked in his Senate offices in the early 1990s, Tara Reade, has come forward to accuse him of sexually assaulting her in 1993, as reported by Reason’s Robby Soave. Reade claims that Biden forcibly kissed her and reached into her pants to penetrate her while pushing her against a wall. She says fear of retaliation kept her from speaking out until now.
Of course, conservatives for consistency’s sake must insist that Biden deserves fair due process, and allegations alone are not sufficient evidence to brand a man a sexual assaulter and torpedo his reputation and career. But for Biden’s most prominent Democratic supporters, they’re in quite a tough bind due to the deeply illiberal, guilty-by-accusation precedent they set during the Kavanaugh affair.
Sen. Kamala Harris, for example, was one of the most prominent advocates against Kavanaugh.
“I believe her,” Harris said, speaking of the justice’s accuser, professor Christine Blasey Ford. “Listen, first of all, anybody who comes forward at this point to be prepared to testify in the United States Senate against someone who’s being nominated to one of the most powerful positions in the United States government, that takes an extraordinary amount of courage.”
Harris has now endorsed Biden for the Democratic nomination. If she does not immediately denounce him in light of this accusation, all of her emotional condemnations of Kavanaugh were simply the partisan theatrics of a deeply cynical, conniving politician willing to disregard due process for her political opponents, but not her allies.
In fact, Reade even claims she reached out to Harris’s office about her accusation and never heard back. Something tells me if she’d been accusing Mitch McConnell, Harris and her team would have had Reade in front of cameras the very next day.
So, too, Sen. Cory Booker has endorsed Biden. The New Jersey Democrat, like Harris, also railed against Kavanaugh and voted against his nomination in part due to the allegation.
Cory Booker said it didn’t matter if Kavanaugh was guilty or innocent, and that it was time to “move on to another candidate because ultimately, the Supreme Court is not an entitlement.” Surely, the same holds true for the White House.
Shouldn’t we expect Booker to withdraw his support for Biden in short order? Don’t hold your breath.
Booker and Harris are merely two examples, but countless other Democratic politicians and liberal leaders now find themselves in a similar bind. Heck, even Biden himself took a “believe all women” approach to the Kavanaugh affair. At the time, he said: “For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you’ve got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she’s talking about is real.”
Certainly, then, we must assume that “the essence” of what Reade is saying “is real” as well. As Soave wryly asks, “Does Joe Biden Believe Tara Reade?”
Of course, Biden defenders may be quick to point out that Reade is a Bernie Sanders supporter, that the timing of her coming forward is indeed politically suspect, and that so far, there is not substantial evidence or corroboration backing her claims. They’re right. As a result, conservatives should maintain that Biden deserves the presumption of innocence. But that was all true for Kavanaugh as well, and Democrats decided it didn’t matter.
Now it’s time that liberals pay the price for their partisan abandonment of due process in the public sphere. If Democrats are unwilling to abandon Biden, conservatives should insist that Democrats admit they were wrong about Kavanaugh — and promise to respect due process rights for all, not just their political allies, going forward. Anything less is partisan hypocrisy at its worst.
