If Nancy Pelosi didn’t have double standards, she wouldn’t have any standards at all. At least, that’s what the speaker of the House’s Monday endorsement of Joe Biden for president suggests.
“Now more than ever, we need a forward-looking, battle-tested leader who will fight for the people: a president with the values, experience, and the strategic thinking to bring our nation together and build a better, fairer world for our children,” Pelosi said as she unveiled her endorsement in a video message. “I’m proud to endorse Joe Biden for president. A leader who is the personification of hope and courage, values, authenticity, and integrity.”
“Elections are about the future. Now more than ever, we need a forward-looking, battle-tested leader who will fight for the people…”@SpeakerPelosi endorses @JoeBiden.
https://t.co/1FFlkFzW8x— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) April 27, 2020
There’s just one glaring problem: Pelosi helped lead the charge to derail the nomination of conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh due to an evidence-free sexual assault accusation. She has now endorsed Biden, who faces a similar and somewhat more substantiated accusation of sexual assault.
In fall 2018, professor Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Kavanaugh had assaulted her as a teenager. She could not produce any corroboration and in fact could not remember where or specifically when the assault happened. The key witness Blasey Ford said would confirm her story ended up remembering nothing of the sort.
For Pelosi, this was enough. She essentially branded Kavanaugh a rapist and called for the end of his legal career.
“Today is a profoundly heart-breaking day for women, girls and families across America,” the speaker said in a statement after Kavanaugh’s confirmation. “Courageous women risked their safety and well-being to speak truth about this nomination. Tens of thousands more joined them to share their own harrowing stories of sexual assault, at great personal risk. Yet, Senate Republicans chose to send a clear message to all women: Do not speak out, and if you do — do not expect to be heard, believed, or respected.”
Now, a former aide from Biden’s Senate office, Tara Reade, has come forward to accuse him of having forcibly assaulted her in 1993. Surprise — Nancy Pelosi now does not believe that such women should be “heard, believed, or respected.” And note that unlike in Kavanaugh’s case, we can actually prove that Reade and Biden were in the same place together. She worked for him, and she has provided substantially more contemporaneous corroboration than Blasey Ford ever did.
At this point, there’s essentially more contemporaneous evidence of Tara Reade’s allegation against Joe Biden than there was of Blasey Ford’s allegation against Brett Kavanaugh. Yet the media could not be handling the matter more differently. https://t.co/InqtdAcRRG
— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) April 27, 2020
My @ArcDigi piece on the #JoeBiden vs #BrettKavanaugh allegations, now with an update about the new #TaraReade info.https://t.co/nxqxnBc93d
— Cathy Young (@CathyYoung63) April 25, 2020
Of course, there are still reasons to doubt Reade’s story, just as there were many reasons to doubt Blasey Ford’s account. The former vice president is not a rapist just because someone leveled an accusation. Biden deserves a presumption of innocence, just as Kavanaugh did.
But Pelosi didn’t think that when a political adversary’s head was on the block. So how can she explain her blatant double standard now? When her ideological foes faced an evidence-free #MeToo accusation, she assumed it was true and thought it disqualifying. Now that it’s Biden, she gives him her emphatic endorsement and praises his “integrity.”
The sad part is that given the way the liberal media has largely avoided Reade’s story and failed to ask Biden supporters about it, Pelosi probably won’t be confronted with her hypocrisy anytime soon. That doesn’t make the speaker’s partisan #MeToo double standards any less disgraceful.
