Washington Post editor who wrote an entire book asserting Brett Kavanaugh was guilty isn’t so sure about Joe Biden

This is quite the take coming from a writer who concluded in her 2019 book that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is guilty of a far less credible, uncorroborated allegation of sexual misconduct dating back to his high school days, which was brought against him by Christine Blasey Ford during his Senate confirmation.

Reade claims she was sexually assaulted by Biden when she worked for him as a Senate aide in the early 1990s. Marcus tries to distinguish Ford from Reade by asserting that there is no evidence that Biden would behave in such a way with a woman, whereas the “Kavanaugh chapter produced evidence, albeit inconclusive, of other incidents, when he was young, of problematic behavior toward women.”

Wait, wait. What? What other “incidents” involving Kavanaugh serve as “evidence” of his inappropriate behavior toward women?

Is Marcus talking about Julie Swetnick, whose laughable claim that she witnessed Kavanaugh participating in gang-rapes when he was roughly 15-years-old fell apart almost instantly under scrutiny? Is Marcus talking about Deborah Ramirez, whose story alleging Kavanaugh exposed himself in college was denied by everyone supposedly present when it happened? Or perhaps Marcus is referring to that anonymous letter, citing claims supposedly made by anonymous third-parties, that Kavanaugh had once “aggressively and sexually” pushed a woman up against a wall?

Is this the so-called evidence Marcus cites?

Biden is notorious for pawing women up and down, making them feel extremely uncomfortable — even Marcus admits that. That does not make Biden guilty, nor does it make his accuser’s allegation credible. But Reade has so far offered more against Biden than anyone ever offered against Kavanaugh.

Remember — news outlets went to great lengths in 2018 to establish a pattern of wild, unruly behavior by Kavanaugh. The best they could find was a story alleging that he had thrown some ice at someone in a bar in 1985.

But this is also disingenuous, for the double-standard points only in one direction. Most of those who have highlighted Reade’s allegation have never claimed that Biden is a rapist — indeed, nearly all of them have been careful to note Reade’s inconsistencies and express appropriate skepticism in regards to her story. But they have highlighted the double-standard to which Kavanaugh was quite clearly subjected. He should have been given the treatment that Marcus, with apparently zero self-awareness, now gives Biden.

Ford either forgot or gave inconsistent answers about basic details of her alleged assault, such as its date (even its year) and its location. No one, not even her high school friend supposedly present when it happened, could corroborate that Ford and Kavanaugh had ever met or been in the same room together. Reade, in contrast, actually worked in Biden’s office — that is a matter of record. So even if her story is not credible, it is already a more credible one than Ford’s for that reason alone.

Even Marcus is forced to concede that Reade, who supported Sen. Bernie Sanders and might have ulterior motives for coming forward in an election year, has nonetheless provided some contemporaneous corroboration of her claim. Again, this cannot be said for Ford.

Finally, I am puzzled at Marcus’s contention that Reade’s case seems politically motivated whereas Ford’s does not. What does she think the Kavanaugh hearings were about?

In Marcus’s 2019 book, Supreme Ambition: Brett Kavanaugh and the Conservative Takeover, she concludes that the Senate’s supposedly “rushed investigation” of the allegations against Kavanaugh ensures that his tenure in the Supreme Court “will forever have an asterisk attached.”

Fast forward to 2020, and Marcus is hesitant now to make such simplistic, if implicit, judgments of guilt without evidence. Now she writes, “I don’t think what Reade claimed happened, yet the evidence is murky.”

That may be code for, “Joe Biden is a Democrat.”