Right now, the available evidence does not prove that Joe Biden more likely than not committed the 1993 assault that his former Senate staffer Tara Reade has alleged. Part of this is purely on the virtue of the age of the allegation limiting the available evidence, but as of now, the other bellwethers usually indicating that even a decades-old assault can be proven beyond the preponderance of evidence — multiple contemporaneously corroborating witnesses, a pattern of behavior, a consistent account — just haven’t materialized.

In other words, if Biden were an ordinary presidential candidate, a thorough media investigation into the allegation would probably exonerate him. But the former vice president is no normal candidate. He’s a Democrat for one thing, but more importantly, he’s a Democrat running against President Trump, which has led the media to run circles around Reade’s allegation in a way that could have read as a standard manifestation of the Democrat-media sycophancy complex.