Not a single liberal of note has come forward to say, “You know what, we got it wrong with the #MeToo thing, and we shouldn’t have done what we did to Brett Kavanaugh and other men accused of sexual assault.”
For that, the Democratic Party and the national media deserve every bit of hell they’re getting as they struggle to justify their dismissal or lack of concern over the allegations facing the presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
There are plenty of questions left to ask about Biden’s accuser, Tara Reade, who says he penetrated her with his fingers in the early 1990s when she was a staffer in his Senate office. But there is no question left about what we’re witnessing right now, and that is the collapse of all pretense that #MeToo has become anything more than a weapon in politics.
The newfound thoughtfulness and curiosity that these people are professing when it comes to accusations of sexual misconduct don’t earn them sympathy or respect. They made their bed, and now they’ll have to lay in it.
Biden and his supporters have tried to pretend that they haven’t changed their position on assuming the guilt of the accused in sexual assault cases, a convenient pivot that’s really just an excuse for their abrupt abandonment of the standards they would have others live by.
“Look, from the very beginning, I’ve said believing women means taking the claims seriously when she steps forward and then vet it,” Biden said last week. “Look into it. That’s true in this case as well.”
Stacey Abrams, the try-hard failed gubernatorial candidate out of Georgia, who also wants to be Biden’s running mate, said the same thing in a recent interview. “I believe that women deserve to be heard, and I believe that they need to be listened to,” she said. “But I also believe that those allegations have to be investigated by credible sources.”
“Believe all women” is now, “Well, let’s take a look at the facts.” Mind you, that’s not because something fundamentally changed about how things work. It’s because the fight over Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation is over, and the next presidential election isn’t.
Asked about the obvious double standard liberals are applying, Abrams said her chief concern wasn’t that the Senate was about to confirm a Supreme Court justice who she presumed to be guilty of a violent sexual assault, but that “there was a rush to move the conversation forward so that no investigation was conducted.”
It’s laughable. Kavanaugh underwent several FBI investigations. His years as a high school and college student were pored over by the national media, the Senate Judiciary Committee interviewed both him and his accuser, and then there was yet one more FBI investigation based solely on the allegation he faced.
By contrast, at the time of Abrams’s interview, the one “investigation” of Biden and Reade was in the form of a New York Times report that said it was unable to corroborate Reade’s claim substantially.
To their credit, the editorial boards of the New York Times and the Washington Post have both called for more attention to Reade’s allegation. But they don’t get a reward for doing the right thing.
Similarly, liberals don’t deserve any mercy for changing their minds on #MeToo, now that it’s their party suffering.
