BidenWatch for May 4, 2020

Is the Tara Reade rape allegation going to be the silver bullet that drops Biden? It seemed unlikely when the story first broke, but just enough supporting evidence has come to light, and just enough Democrats not acting like total hypocrites and supporting an investigation into the charges, that the scandal won’t go away.

Oh, and New York just threw Bernie Sanders off the ballot. Funny how things like that happen when you cross the DNC. It’s this week’s BidenWatch!

  • Another witness who heard Tara Reade talk about being sexually harassed by Biden.
  • Reade wants Biden to released his sealed senate records.
  • The Washington Post called on Biden to address the Tara Reade accusations and release his records.
  • Cracks in the blue wall?

    The New York Times follows up the Tara Reade story with news that activist women’s groups and key Democratic officials have not remained entirely silent about the allegation of sexual assault. Over the last three weeks, those groups have pressed Joe Biden to speak out and deal with Reade’s allegations, and they have held their fire after being promised action.

    Now, however, they’re tired of getting strung along — and may soon make their unhappiness public:

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • A quick recap of the evidence:

  • Potential veep pick Sen. Kamala Harris believed Biden’s accusers in 2019.
  • Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen “Lockdown” Whitmer saysnot every sexual assault claim is equal. Of course she does; her party has always treated those against someone with a (D) after their name as unworthy of investigation.
  • Women’s groups on Biden accuser Tara Reade: “Who?”
  • Nancy Pelosi’s Brett Kavanaugh opinions updated for Joe Biden. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Reade Says Complaint Would Prove Biden Aides Dennis Toner And Ted Kaufman Lied About Not Knowing Her.”
  • “Senate Democrats Refuse To Acknowledge Sexual Assault Accusations Against Joe Biden.”
  • Can you still hear it, Tara? The Silence of the Dems?
  • “U of Delaware Must Release Biden Senate Records Amid #MeToo Scandal, FOIA Request Demands.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • TeamBiden lied enough that even the New York Times got miffed:

  • Speaking of the New York Times, they suggested the DNC assemble a team to go through Biden’s papers. DNC: “You’re high.”
  • More on that subject:

  • Speaking of the DNC, New York just removed Bernie Sanders from the ballot for the June 28 primary.

  • Powers of 10, how do they work? (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Biden tosses more word salad. Will he get tossed by the DNC?

  • And sometimes he doesn’t even speak at all:

  • The Biden-Kavanaugh double standard:

    The operative question for many in the press as they assess Tara Reade’s assault allegation against Joe Biden is the correct one: Is Tara Reade telling the truth? It does not matter what other senators may or may not have done to other women in other places or at other times. It does not matter — for purposes of establishing Joe Biden’s culpability — whether the Long Arc of History Bends toward Justice, whether other women who look like Tara Reade were assaulted by men who look like Joe Biden, or whether it would facilitate a more equitable future if we jettisoned Joe Biden, guilt be damned. What seems to matter to the media, for purposes of assessing Biden’s candidacy, is whether then-senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. digitally penetrated Tara Reade in 1993.

    But this, crucially, is not what mattered to these same media players when then-judge Brett Kavanaugh was accused of assault, then indecent exposure, then gang rape in a series of successively more lurid allegations. What mattered then were not only the merits of Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation — and that’s Dr. Ford, to you — but also the behavior of parties completely unrelated to those allegedly involved in the assault, parties who, by accident of birth, happened to look like Brett Kavanaugh, grow up like Brett Kavanaugh, and inhabit the “world of privilege” that Kavanaugh allegedly inhabited.

    Joe Biden is being treated as an individual — a man being accused of a specific crime that either did, or did not, occur. Brett Kavanaugh was treated as a totem — an antihero, an anti-messianic stand-in for all of History’s various Straight White Men who “got away with it,” who were cushioned from the vagaries of life by their unthinkable “privilege,” lashing out against the browning of America and the long-prophesied end of the Old Boys’ Club.

  • Biden wants the benefit-of-the-doubt, innocent-until-proven-guilty standard that he helped deny male college students.

    The problem with defending due process in a case like Biden’s with respect to Tara Reade is that Biden himself, when it comes to allegations of sexual abuse and harassment, doesn’t believe in it. Perhaps in part to atone for his shabby treatment of Anita Hill, Biden was especially prominent in the Obama administration’s overhaul of Title IX treatment of claims of sexual discrimination and harassment on campus. You can listen to Biden’s strident speeches and rhetoric on this question and find not a single smidgen of concern with the rights of the accused. Men in college were to be regarded as guilty before being proven innocent, and stripped of basic rights in their self-defense.

    Harvard Law professor Jeannie Suk Gersen noted the consequences of Biden’s crusade in The New Yorker last year. “In recent years,” she wrote, “it has become commonplace to deny accused students access to the complaint, the evidence, the identities of witnesses, or the investigative report, and to forbid them from questioning complainants or witnesses … According to K.C. Johnson, a professor at Brooklyn College and an expert on Title IX lawsuits, more than four hundred students accused of sexual misconduct since 2011 have sued their schools under federal or state laws — in many cases, for sex discrimination under Title IX. While many of the lawsuits are still ongoing, nearly half of the students who have sued have won favorable court rulings or have settled with the schools.”

    On Friday’s Morning Joe, Biden laid out a simple process for judging him: Listen respectfully to Tara Reade, and then check for facts that prove or disprove her specific claim. The objective truth, Biden argued, is what matters. I agree with him. But this was emphatically not the standard Biden favored when judging men in college. If Biden were a student, under Biden rules, Reade could file a claim of assault, and Biden would have no right to know the specifics, the evidence provided, who was charging him, who was a witness, and no right to question the accuser. Apply the Biden standard for Biden, have woke college administrators decide the issue in private, and he’s toast.

    Under Biden, Title IX actually became a force for sex discrimination — as long as it was against men. Emily Yoffe has done extraordinary work exposing the injustices of the Obama-Biden sexual-harassment regime on campus, which have mercifully been pared back since. But she has also highlighted Biden’s own zeal in the cause. He brushed aside most legal defenses against sexual harassment. In a speech at the University of Pittsburgh in 2016, for example, Biden righteously claimed that it was an outrage that any woman claiming sexual assault should have to answer questions like “Were you drinking?” or “What did you say?” “These are questions that angered me then and anger me now.” He went on: “No one, particularly a court of law, has a right to ask any of those questions.”

    Particularly a court of law? A court cannot even inquire what a woman said in a disputed sexual encounter? Couldn’t that be extremely relevant to the question of consent? Or ask if she were drinking? It may be extremely salient that she had been drinking — because it could prove rape, if she were incapacitated and unable to consent and sex took place. But Biden’s conviction that young men on campus should be legally handicapped in defending themselves from charges of sexual abuse occluded any sense of basic fairness.

  • Consistency, Democratic Party style:

  • Meanwhile, if the DNC does whack Biden off the ticket, Grandma Death is ready for the call.
  • Speaking of which, those two titans of charisma were palling around on video:

    

  • Who best to vet female VP candidates? Would you believe Chris “Waitress Sandwich” Dodd?
  • Twitchy has some thoughts on that.
  • Early Presidential race dropout California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell thinks Reade’s claim should be investigated. How many of you had “Eric Swalwell” on your Biden Scandal Bingo cards? Now put your hands down you damn liars!
  • “Big money donors are pressuring Joe Biden against picking Elizabeth Warren for VP: ‘He would lose the election.'” For once, big donors and Bernie Bros are on the same page…
  • “Blue-check feminist who was AOK with innocent men losing jobs over false allegations believes Tara Reade but still voting Biden.”

  • How desperate are Democrats? Desperate enough to float a Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama ticket, Constitution be damned. (The author’s attempt to tapdance around the constitutional issue should cause thousands of legal scholars to faceplam themselves.)
  • “‘I Have Never Treated A Woman Inappropriately,’ Joe Biden Whispers Into Journalist’s Ear.”
  • “Biden Attempts To Win Over Youth With Appearance On ‘The Ed Sullivan Show.'”
  • “Judge Dismisses Sexual Assault Allegations Against Biden On Grounds That He Is Not A Republican.”
  • Heh:

  • Heh 2:

  • Titania McGrath weighs in:
    

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    This entry was posted on Monday, May 4th, 2020 at 6:47 AM and is filed under Democrats, Elections, Media Watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

    One Response to “BidenWatch for May 4, 2020”

    1. T Migratorious says:
      May 4, 2020 at 2:20 PM

      As hard as it is for me to believe, it looks like the Dem establishment is going to stick with Biden. I think it’s because, with all of the pushing and pulling going on with the far left faction (the Squad, Bernie Bros), Biden’s the only reliable stooge they have.

      One reason I think so: the dog that didn’t bark yesterday. In other words, if they were going to throw Biden under the bus, prominent establishment Democrats would have been on all of the Sunday shows talking about the Tara Reade allegations. Instead, Tom Perez was on “This Week,” but otherwise it looks like it was all Wuhan virus.

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