Yves here. Even though the press and Vichy Left treatment of Tara Reade’s allegations of rape by Joe Biden1 has been predictably disgraceful, we would normally regard this as a purely political story and hence more suited to Links/Water Cooler coverage.
However, as Tom points out, l’affaire Tara Reade has also become a media story, as in providing yet more evidence of how the press covers for favored interests. The Dems are all in for Biden, the mainstream press is all in for the Dems, ergo, the mainstream press is all in for Biden. So it’s noteworthy that despite the concerted effort to relegate the Tara Reade account to Hallin’s sphere of deviance, the New York Times clearing its throat and then the Washington Post editorial board calling for Biden to address Tara Reade’s account means that horse has finally left the barn.
I am nevertheless surprised that Biden is taking the bait. He’s set to discuss the matter on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today, as in Friday. I hope some of you will watch in full, not only out of political or prurient interest, but also to see how severely cherry-picked the follow-on reports are.
On the one hand, I am sure that no matter what Biden says, operatives like Pelosi will say, “Biden has discussed this already and I am satisfied with his answers. We need to put this behind us.” In fact, as Tom points out, Pelosi is now satisfied with Biden’s non-answers!
On the other, it’s hard to see how Biden can say anything that will make this controversy go away. If he makes a non-denial like “I don’t remember anything of the kind and I’d never do anything like that,” it opens him up to more jibes about his deteriorating mental state and replays of videos and other accounts of Biden getting way too hands-y with women and little girls.
And if he tries the smearing-the-victim route when Reade has nothing to gain from coming forward, let alone now, that has the potential to backfire. Perhaps he’ll try ducking the question by blathering on about how he’s has the highest respect for women, had always had great relationships with the women working for him and how he’s helped advance the careers of women working for and with him, but I don’t see how not talking about Tara Reade works given that that’s what he agreed to do.
And it goes without saying that this episode confirms my low opinion of #MeToo. Its adherents were never interested taking up the cause of non-privileged women who face abuse on a regular basis, like waitresses. Instead, they looked to often to be acting out of a widespread rage among careerist women of having to deal with predatory or merely openly sexist bosses, and attacking available targets, even when the evidence against them was thin.
By Thomas Neuburger. Originally published at DownWithTyranny!
Is the Tara Reade story reaching critical mass, approaching a tipping point? It seems so.
The initial response to this story was silence from anyone with political or media power. The media in particular completely ignored it. Comparisons of CNN coverage of the Reade story with their coverage of the Blasey Ford story show a marked discrepancy. Reade told her full story first in a March 25 interview with Katie Halper. Yet CNN published no Tara Reade stories until April 25, and then, it seems, they published only in embarrassed response to The Intercept‘s revelation that Reade’s mother had called in to CNN’s own show, Larry King Live, on August 11, 1993 to discuss in unspecific terms her daughter’s problem.
CNN finally broke silence on the Reade story less than a day after Ryan Grim and the Intercept published the Larry King show transcript and the Media Research Center located and tweeted a clip of it. Blasey Ford’s story, in contrast, went viral on all national media. including on CNN, as soon as it was available. Deservedly so, in her case. Not so much, in Reade’s.
To conclude that the media buried the story to help Biden remain the presumptive nominee is inescapable. The plan, apparently, was to starve the public of Reade news and wait out the indie-press storm until newer news drew their attention.
Once the wall of silence was breached, the indie press started asking why Democratic Party leaders and opinion makers, especially prominent #MeToo women, were either absent from the discussion or suddenly coming out in support of Biden. Kirstin Gillibrand and Hillary Clinton are the latest to announce support as of this writing, but the silence of many — Elizabeth Warren prominently among them — is still deafening. Note that “I support Joe Biden” and “I believe Joe Biden” are different statements.
Only Nancy Pelosi, speaking with Ari Melber on MSNBC, has been asked directly about Reade’s accusation and replied, “I’m satisfied with his answer.” (It’s very much to the point of this piece that the only sources I could find to link to for this quote are right-wing sources like Breitbart. Yet Melber’s show is on MSNBC.)
Now the story itself, or the story about the story, is coming to mainstream pages and screens, thanks partly to the shaming of the indie press and partly to the recent report by Rich McHugh in Business Insider.
Michelle Goldberg tweeted this on April 27, three days prior to this writing:
This is the most persuasive corroborating evidence that has come out so far. What a nightmare. https://t.co/u4yPbEElaf
— Michelle Goldberg (@michelleinbklyn) April 27, 2020
The New York Times now publicly acknowledges Biden’s silence:
Democratic Frustration Mounts as Biden Remains Silent on Sexual Assault Allegation
Activists and women’s rights advocates have urged Mr. Biden to address a former aide’s allegation that he sexually assaulted her in 1993. His lack of response has angered them.
In an April 27 New Yorker story entitled “The Biden Trap: As the candidate faces credible assault allegations, his progressive female colleagues are being offered a poisoned chalice,” Rebecca Traister observes:
Biden’s shaky past behavior around women and their bodies isn’t staying in his past.
BuzzFeed weighs in with “Democrats Will Have To Answer Questions About Tara Reade. The Biden Campaign Is Advising Them To Say Her Story “Did Not Happen.””
In which article we see this:
Democrats are in an increasingly precarious position as reporters assess Reade’s allegation. By any measure of the #MeToo movement that has seen the Democratic Party embrace “believe women” as a mantra, Reade, 56, has provided a serious account, disputed by Biden’s campaign and former senior staffers who worked in his office in 1993 but corroborated in part by people she told about the incident in the 1990s.
Chris Cillizza add his bit with “Joe Biden’s campaign is twisting a New York Times story to defend against the Tara Reade allegation“.
And the Daily Beast pursues responses from 10 prominent women’s groups and notes their near universal silence (emphasis added):
Why Have Women’s Groups Gone Dead Silent on Biden Sex-Assault Accusation?
Women’s groups and prominent feminist figures have remained almost universally silent over a former staffer’s accusation of sexual misconduct against former Vice President Joe Biden—including those individuals and groups who came to express regret for how the Democratic Party handled similar accusations made against President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
The collective non-response from mostly Democrat-aligned groups comes as potential female running mates struggle themselves in responding to the Biden allegation, which has the potential to upend his campaign against President Donald Trump, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by dozens of womenin alleged incidents spanning decades. And it echoes the division among progressives when the #MeToo movement revived scrutiny of Clinton’s own alleged sexual misconduct.
The Daily Beast contacted 10 top national pro-women organizations for this story, including Emily’s List, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and the National Organization for Women. Most organizations did not respond to a detailed request for comment about the allegation by Tara Reade, a former staff assistant in Biden’s Senate office who has accused the former vice president of forcibly penetrating her with his fingers in the early 1990s. Others replied and did not provide a statement.
In addition, according to the article, “neither [attorney Patricia] Ireland [who presided over NOW during the whole of the Clinton administration] nor feminist icon [Gloria] Steinem responded to a request for comment about Reade’s accusations against Biden.”
Finally, the Washington Post‘s editorial board writes on April 29: “Biden himself should address the Tara Reade allegations and release relevant records“.
What’s notable in all these reports isn’t the story itself. It’s that the story is being told in mainstream media outlets where people with mainstream lives can finally see them.
What’s Next?
The day may be almost here when Gloria Steinem, Elizabeth Warren, and worse for Biden, all of the female VP candidates and hopefuls mentioned by Traister in her “poisoned chalice” New Yorker article will be asked on the record, not if they support Joe Biden, but if they believe him.
That’s a question few women with strong #MeToo credentials will want to answer, since it ties them, perhaps forever, to Biden’s “historical shortcomings” (in Traister’s delicate phrasing). They have to be concerned that, if another credible accuser comes forward, it could sink them all.
Will this explosion of coverage lead to a collapse of the Biden campaign and a DNC search for a new 2020 standard-bearer? We can’t be sure it will. Every indication that’s come to my ears suggests that DNC Democrats, those with real power, are certain the storm will be weathered, the story will pass into the background, spring will fade to summer, then to fall, and by November Party-leaning minds will think only of Trump and the wreckage he represents.
But critical mass brings tipping points. We also can’t be sure that Reade’s story won’t lead to Biden’s collapse, now that the difficult questions are starting to be asked in places that give permission to ask them.
___
1 As reader Landrew pointed out, the Justice Department defines rape as “The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” Many states use the term “sexual assault” with a functionally equivalent definition.
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Perhaps the Democrats could recruit a transgendered woman to be Joe and Jill Biden’s running mate? This could satisfy Democrat inclusivity requirements-as well as…..
muddying the waters. Changing the “conversation” away from vile, repugnant Joe?
At least, Joe has never been recorded saying that most damning and unforgivable of words, “pussy”!
s/ Thanks for the penetrating insight. /s
maybe not the best choice of words
s/ Yes, you’ve put your finger on it. /s
Or even more outlandish, run the guy with the second-highest number of delegates from this season’s primaries.
How do convince the Biden supporters to vote for them? They didn’t vote for them before, why now? And saying that not doing so,is a vote for Trump, wont help, since some of the other candidates, wont vote for him anyway
Blue no matter who, of course. Unity!
Anything else is a vote for Trump! Carry the palanquin! Etc. etc. etc.
Not sure that will work, when some say they won’t for Biden no matter what cause their candidate didn’t win. Why would they do that now?
Bernie is the perfect choice to be the nominee. He could quit half-way through the campaign and then endorse Trump a couple of weeks before the election.
Thanks for the chuckle, edmondo.
What JohnMinMN said.
Also, “Donald Trump is a good friend and he’s a decent guy who can win,” probably won’t cut it as a stock response to questions, so he’ll have to come up with something new.
Only thing is – he happens to be a wimp.
I was thinking about this yesterday, in reference to Stacey Abrams and or Kamala Harris, and how race is just no longer enough to achieve Peak Grift.
I think the ideal Biden running mate would be a transgendered white male (he>she) as you suggested. Of course he/she would have to be a disabled veteran, whose PTSD from serving in Afghanistan and Iraq brought about the change in his/her identity. Additionally he/she would obviously have two families (former and current marriages) to parade around on the campaign Trail.
Both spouses would obviously have to be non-white, maybe an asian or hispanic wife from the first marriage where he identified as a man, and a black woman, who now identifies as a a man in the second marriage and helped him/her father the children.
In this age of bread and circuses, you have to give the crowd something they haven’t seen before.
But Chelsea would not please the Military Industrial Complex for obvious reasons. Not a bad idea though.
But in today’s woke world you can be anyone you choose to be. He could pick a white guy who “identifies” as a transgendered lesbian of color etc and tick off all the boxes, like Terry Gilliam! I’d vote for Gilliam in a heartbeat!!!
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jul/04/terry-gilliam-on-diversity-bbc-monty-python-black-lesbian
““It made me cry: the idea that … no longer six white Oxbridge men can make a comedy show. Now we need one of this, one of that, everybody represented… this is bullshit. I no longer want to be a white male, I don’t want to be blamed for everything wrong in the world: I tell the world now I’m a black lesbian… My name is Loretta and I’m a BLT, a black lesbian in transition.”
Last I heard, Chelsea Manning was out of prison.
Chelsea Manning is way too good to be a tool for the (un)Democratic Party.
Maybe Caitlyn Jenner…so much built-in media buzz.
I would hate to give Donald Trump any ideas, but I doubt anyone there read this, so …
He could divorce Melania and marry Caitlyn Jenner and that would bring hordes of the woke Dems over to him. Even better he could come out as trans himself. That would demolish the Dem base, no matter what permutation of traits the Dem veep candidate had.
Oops, posted the same thing before scrolling down. You said it first.
> Every indication that’s come to my ears suggests that DNC Democrats, those with real power, are certain the storm will be weathered, the story will pass into the background, spring will fade to summer, then to fall, and by November Party-leaning minds will think only of Trump and the wreckage he represents.
I did a quick search and it seems Trump has only begun to weigh in on this issue.
Can’t imagine that he will let it go so easily as the MSM, though.
“Weather the storm” might not be such an untenable strategy. Even demonstrably false lies like Biden’s ostensible objection to the war in Iraq, social security cuts, or his heroic civil rights demonstrations in South Africa don’t seem to be that consequential for voters. 1988 this aint! The vileness of the allegations against Biden or the corroboration of the accuser’s story isn’t without precedent for a Democrat on the national stage, what price did Bill Clinton pay for the Juanita Broddrick allegations?
And I don’t know that Trump harping on this is going to be any more effective than “the emails” or “Comey’s investigation” or anything else. Like Yves said in her Sanders campaign post-mortem:
I’m really staring to think that these things are hugely inflated in the minds of people who are heavily politically engaged and there’s a more generic sort of charisma that resonates with voters who aren’t all that engaged. Biden seems to have it to a certain degree and it might not be a bad strategy for the DNC insiders to try to drag him across the finish line in November. Even if they lose, they’re not going to wind up out on the street.
it sure that Trump should even touch it (though can’t imagine him not doing so under any circumstance…would be the pot calling kettle black). Course most conservatives have lost any credibility on it also. So the more he brings it up the more that voters will remember his own history (with an assist from Biden campaign…among others…lots of others…plus the tape
Biden is Trump’s dream opponent (a hack politician even older than himself, with evident dementia and a stink of sexual misconduct and familial corruption). So he should go easy on him, at least until the nomination is in the bag.
The big question is whether the Dems can still replace Joe. The easiest path would be Biden withdrawing on (legitimate) health grounds in favour of his selected running mate. So the choice of VP is something to watch closely.
Trojan Horse. But the package will then still have to explain why they took the job with Biden. Trump can hammer on that and the democratic Democrat primaries, and I loathe to say it, but he would be right.
Dream opponent? IMHO A whole lotta people would crawl over glass to vote for a paper bag, if the bag were the D nominee. I read a lot about “motivating the base.” What’s missing is the base that’s being motivated. Not a fan of Joe, but desperate times require desperate measures.
rusti
May 1, 2020 at 3:59 am
I’m really staring to think that these things are hugely inflated in the minds of people who are heavily politically engaged…
================================
I agree with you. If I may draw an analogy: Trump supposedly is a big tax cheater. Endless speculation about this is “news.” That is, the speculationis presented as news. It can fill untold hours of “news time” in print and on the air. If Trump is in fact guilty of tax fraud, what does it ACTUALLY say about the American legal system and any hope for justice in this country? Trump had been a billionaire for ?40? or more years, and subject to tax scrutiny under both state and federal jurisdictions by both repubs and dems for that interim. Yet no one can pin anything on him….a serious… or cynical person might even posit that the US system is designed to protect the rich…
Funny how tax scams that benefit only the rich are deemphasized in the “news”
It is hard to imagine Biden, Trump, or Kavanaugh being convicted, never the less even prosecuted, for 30 year old charges. And I don’t think that would be a good idea. Yet a serious discussion would address all the abuses lower income women endure and address how complaints would be competently and aggressively investigated at the time of the assault. Its almost like endless chattering about the issue is too good to give up…
Who is the more believable man: Biden or Kavanaugh?
Who is the more believable woman: Reade or Ford?
I believe both the women. There is a significant difference in the cases, however. Reade is alleging an actual crime, and there is considerable substantiation. Ford is alleging a drunken juvenile party event with no substantiation and no alleged crime.
The Democrats decided to turn the appointment of a Supreme Court justice into an episode of the Jerry Springer show, ignoring all the many substantive real Kavanaugh issues: he’s a Republican operative, married to GW Bush’s secretary for Pete’s sake, AOK with torture and the secret surveillance state, an acolyte of torture lawyer John Yoo – a really bad guy. But the Dems went after none of this – why? My theory is that they are complicit, and they mind not a whit to bring the Supreme Court into total disrepute to get the plebes all riled up and avoid criticism which will redound on them.
Similar hypocrisy on display wrt to Biden and Reade, but – Biden is done in any case. He was pathetic with Mika. A shell.
divadab
May 1, 2020 at 1:55 pm
At some point, one has to ask, what is the substantive differences between dems and repubs? As far as I can tell, its simply and ONLY division of the grift…
Substantively, coke and pepsi differ more, and Ford was only an advertising ploy to say that things go better with coke, er, dems…
Ah yes, the gentleman from Rage Against The Machine had similar concerns a couple decades ago. See link to their Nader campaign supporting song “Testify” here. Frustrating how little has changed.(I can watch that video all day)
https://youtu.be/Q3dvbM6Pias
+1 for RAM. Truth tellers.
@fresno – on imperial matters, zero difference. But in domestic matters, their bases are different and therefore their emphasis is different. However, the entire system is utterly corrupt and stage-managed by the money boys whom every candidate must pander to regularly, or not get their job purchased for them.
It’s really bad but in the heart of the empire, pretty comfy unless you are poor.
Sorry, but the weepy, petulant outburst during his hearing should have immediately disqualified him.
Yup. This exactly, especially wrt Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Feinstein. She was deep into the torture, surveillance, war, etc. Most other Dems have gone along with all that. It did seem like there was a very tentative effort to start bringing some of those things into the conversation. The minute the Ford stuff started coming out, both sides dialed it up to 11, in somewhat different ways, and that was all you heard from then on.
Trump already said something (unintentionally?) hilarious:
NYT: “I think he should respond,” President Trump said of Mr. Biden on Thursday, as his campaign signaled this week it intended to make the allegation a campaign issue. “It could be false accusations.”
The guy can just dig in the knife and turn it.
The Democrats are weaving a meaningless “widdershins” world. Everything inside out and upside down. Their words have contradictory and transitory meanings. NGOs whose actions are the complete inverse of their names (logos).
It is pointless to discuss what has no true meaning. What can be said about gibberish? Like “a madman’s shit”, NZ slang for a Joe Biden situation.
Why? Because we really don’t want 4 more years of Trump, that’s why. Is that a good reason? Hard to say, but that is the reason.
So they are supposedly single-issue groups but they are willing to sell out their principles because they are aligned with Team Dem. Glad we have that one clear.
The article used the phrase shaming of the indie press. There is much more shaming to go around, by whichever press is handy.
Who is worse Trump or Biden …really those are our only choice, as if any one else gets elected, they won’t have much if any support in congress
Yeah, who? Because neither represents my interests. And any woman’s group who expects anything other than lip service from Senator MBNA, well he dances with them that owns him and that isn’t them.
(For the record his long history of disrespecting women shows what he really thinks of their rights. And backing him here pretty much destroys any power base women’s groups might have to push him to do the right thing. Reminds me of 2016 where they picked the woman who had repeatedly done nothing but use her gender as she courted more conservative voters over the guy who had always had their back.)
What part of feminism do we not understand?
“it is possible to ask what kinds of social change would be needed in order to empower women in general, most of whom are – along with most men – stuck somewhere near the bottom.”
I suppose they should have considered that when HRH HRC was installed on the ballot in 2016.
You will reap what you sow.
“You will reap what you sow.”
Honest to god.
I read that as, “You will recap what you sow.”
Eyes failing as well in the pandemic. Not good.
If only there had been a credible candidate with timely ideas and massive popular support who could have beaten Trump handily, both in 2016 and 2020.
“Massive public support” ? Where? Not in the voting booth of the Democratic Party primaries as far as I could see.
And therein lies the problem. The DNC can’t see past the fact that the democratic primaries are a poor representation of the general voting public. And the more they conflate the two, the worse it gets.
You say that like it’s a problem. I’d say it’s a solution to the problem of making the dogs eat the dog food.
I didn’t go into 2020 thinking “the lesser of two rapists” would be my choice, but here we are. Good job, Democrats. Good job, Obama.
A man clearly in no shape to be running for President, much less be one, someone with a record that should be deadly legislatively and on civil rights makes it to being the presumptive nominee. But somehow an incident from his past keeps bubbling up despite an overly friendly media. All in a manner that undercuts the moral authority of various institutions AND damages politicians with future aspirations.
Are we living in a James Patterson novel?
As others have said fiction is merely imitative while life is truly stranger than any fiction.
Any idea when the Overlords of the Illuminati show up?
To start I thought you were talking about Trump. Now I’m sad to be reminded of the likely choice between two geriatric demented rapists for president. One more murderous and cruel, the other more gauche and fat.
Guess its choice between the mostly psychopath(T) who at worst my kill us all, or one(B) who has their own issues.
Or rather the one (B) has backed numerous ill thought out military actions and every economic policy designed to strip the majority, including women, of their wealth and economic security. Policies that have actively lowered the life expectancy of the country. IOW, already slowly and not so slowly killing almost all of us.
About the “demented” part, I have been wondering …
Biden is pretty clearly suffering from age-related dementia (ARD). In the case of Trump, is it ARD or just demented in some other sense? Like, maybe he is “just plain nuts.” So, there might be another factor to consider in making a choice. Do you want the guy with ARD, or the one who is just plain nuts?
In the same way the Coronavirus pandemic is showing us how are elites value society and how the rest of us can go starve while politicians have as their priority the protection of the portfolios of the 1%, the selection of Joe Biden is showing us how people with power have been so corrupted with that power that women & children can be thrown under a bus in spite of what has been done to them. And women & pro-women’s groups have been some of the worse at this. It is like a great unmasking this. There is no hiding here. You have to make a stand or go with the flow in order to chase after a part of that power.
If there is any doubt as to the character of Joe Biden himself, just go to YouTube and punch in the search term Creepy Uncle Joe. The conclusion is clear. This is not just about feeling up women and (very) young girls. This is a man that is getting it off by doing this in front of fathers, husbands, boyfriends and colleagues. He has power and this is how he enjoys using it. If the guy instead had a mistress or two on the side or was a regular at a brothel, I could kinda respect that. But this is all about molesting women in front of others because he has the impunity of power. And children are not off limits to him either.
And the Democratic party, the main stream media, and a host of political organizations want you to know that he is your next President. And people should go vote for him.
> This is a man that is getting it off by doing this in front of fathers, husbands, boyfriends and colleagues. He has power and this is how he enjoys using it.
Huh. Half the presidents since Kennedy were known philanderers and it didn’t matter. The stories were there. I don’t know stories about Biden. But there’s a lot of evidence about that public display of power and the particular kink that you see.
Philandering a la Kennedy is one thing – all his paramours were independent adult women who needed not much coaxing – because they entered a consensual relationship freely and without coercion. Biden (allegedly, and Clinton, proven, let us not forget) abused his power to sexually assault a junior employee who he considered little more than a bimbo, a cute cocktail waitress he could use as a plaything. This is a crime!
“Philandering” implies consent. The first dictionary hit I got:
Reade has accused Biden of rape. And you can’t see the difference? Help me.
Forgive me for being unclear. The point is the intersection of the physical act and consent. The argument has been that the violation is penetration without consent. But Obama and his VP marketed the lack of penetration. Implying that therefore there could be no lack of consent, and everyone looked the other way about Biden committing sexual assault, in public and often.
So maybe Joe should bow out in favor of Hunter.
Maybe. But the whole cocaine and pregnant strippers thing would not be a good look. People tend to notice such things.
Look, over there, a shiny object.
And then the electorate went back to their diversions. :(
Cocaine and pregnant strippers would be a net positive in my book. At least he is human.
Did you see this link posted yesterday?
https://theblacksphere.net/2017/11/joe-biden-dc-weinstein/
Caveat, that’s we’re looking at anonymous sources from an obviously biased reporter. But it’s interesting that this was published in 2017 and, if true, establishes a pattern which corroborates the scenario Reade is describing, specifically with regards to sexual harassment via abuse of power. Even taking that link with the appropriate amount of salt, it’s hard to completely dismiss based purely on the amount of “Creepy Uncle Joe” out there.
Biden reminds me of Jimmy Savile.
Yeah, I’ve watched those and another thing that makes me sick is that EVERY ONE of those Dads, or whoever the bystanding males were, just kept simpering on while he was doing it, looking out straight ahead with a glassy thousand-yard stare. At least some of the Moms, or whoever the women were in the vid, seemed to making some attempts to protect their daughters. Of course, in most of those cases, the men were the ones being sworn into office, and they could have blown their careers when they were just starting. But really For [family blog’s] Sake!
Let me know if I’m remembering wrong; I’m not going to go watch the vids again.
how many times did we hear those in the sanctimonious “mainstream press” intone, referring to Trump’s alleged misconduct,
“this would have sunk any other presidential candidacy before now” ?
Biden is a terrible candidate just on his record: Iraq war booster; SSI and Medicare destroyer; Student loan debt servitude purveyor; financial system de-regulator – all items Trump can key in on, esp. SSI. But what Trump will really hammer away on is Tara Reade’s credible accusations, and the obvious corrupt nepotism using his office to make money for his relatives, notably son Hunter Biden.
IMHO Biden is toast, which is a good thing. Very revealing who-all endorsed him none of whom will ever get a nickel or a favorable comment from me. Sanders, Jayapal, Occasio Cortez – just more hacks falling into the party line. Flipping disgraceful. NO principles whatsoever.
NO principles whatsoever.
They certainly have one, and they share it with the rest of our betters, and are willing to lie, rape, and if necessary kill for it.
Diva, stop the bus! You can also read Sanders, Jayapal and AOC support as being for the party objectives, not necessarily for Biden the flawed man. There are sacrifices to be made in the ‘long march’ for our ideals.
What party objectives? Debt slavery? Forever wars? Wall Street bailouts?
All three of these people have set up a powerful dissonance by supporting Joe Biden. Bernie is dead to me. Jayapal and AOC are close. If you want to be a 25 term Congressperson, I guess they are doing the right things. But I can get bullshyt from the DNC, why do we need them?
Sorry, endorsing a “flawed man” for “our ideals” – what are they exactly? The Dems seem only to care about “beating Trump” – at least that’s what every campaign fundraiser I’ve received says the whole thing is about.
I’m an independent. I don;t support either party and consider them both corrupt and incorrigibly so. I vote on policies – and Biden and the Dems are against every policy I think is important – universal “medicare for all”, re-regulating Wall St., more equitable taxes, and support for working families. I would vote for Sanders – I will never vote for Biden. Never. He’s part of the problem. And I feel disappointment and have a hard time not feeling contempt for anyone who endorsed this corrupt shell of a man, this Biden fellow.
Remember these “left wing” Congress members need to fall in line if they’re to amass their fortune.
+100
Critical mass?? Nobody cares. It’s a media driven story when there is no mood for it.
Since when is the Washington Post editorial board “nobody”?
Biden would not be having to go on TV to address the charges if this was a nothingburger.
And Daily Kos is over there.
Yves, +1000!
Forgive me, but this is utterly the reverse of a media driven story – the silence has been deafening, and failing to understand that misses the bigger picture on the ground.
Tara Reade’s story was broken over a month ago, and has been running like wildfire through the platforms of younger voters (internet news, social media, podcasts, etc…), and all that time, the silence from traditional news has been complete.
This *feels* like another case of the fix being in, which is a far bigger problem for Biden than the democratic faithful understand, because of Sanders voters.
Whether they behave this way or not, the democrats need Sanders supporters in a big way, and contrary to the ‘BernieBros’ narative the DNC is no doubt trusting in, the majority of Sanders voters were young women, many of whom can identify with, or have similar stories to Tara Reade’s.
Many of these voters have already seen the DNC put their thumb on one primary in 2016, and then once again in 2020 with the night of long knives Obama orchestrated to bring support to Biden – both times to stop their candidate, Sanders.
Now the Dems are calling for unity, while *not* addressing a story about a sexual assault by the ‘chosen’ candidate. No one will believe the party wasn’t aware of this story when they picked Biden, and the sudden silence of #MeToo only makes it worse.
There’s a school of thought that Christine Blasey-Ford was afforded coverage not because she was accusing a Trump appointee, but because she looked, sounded, and acted like the many media professionals who write the news. They saw in her someone ‘just like them’ and gave her credenece because ‘it could’ve been me.’ I don’t know that I believe this is the entire basis, but it certainly played a role.
Now imagine all the young Sanders voters, who just volunteered for something they thought would change the world, who were crushed by the DNC who’s backing this accused candidate. They just heard Pelosi say effectively ‘Joe Biden will be Joe Biden’ and they might easily think of Tara Reade’s story and take this whole thing to mean ‘if I’d volunteered for another campaign, this might’ve been me… and they wouldn’t care.’
Yes, Tara Reade was a staffer, not a volunteer – that doesn’t make it better, or any less caustic a belief.
Given the fractured state of the democratic party, this single issue can sink a Biden campaign via low turn-out – addressing it was never optional, and waiting this long may have been a fatal misstep, no matter what the dem consultants believe.
Soft young dem turn-out only helps Trump, who’s already shown he doesn’t need to win big, he just needs to win.
I just watched the preamble and set up the hour before Biden is set to appear. Brzezinski first played about 5 minutes of past Morning Joe clips where they said that the press should not smear Cavanaugh without evidence, and then she went through a list if DNC news sources that have claimed that Biden is probably innocent, and then she spent equal time naming all the women that have accused Trump of abuse.
She was almost literally saying we need to choose the lesser of two accused rapists.
But it was a basic formula. 1) Look how balanced I am. 2) Look at what all these respected people are saying 3) Look at this other worse horrible other person to make my person look better
She did not play this clip by the way…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGVJ8EneaAk
She is not calling for an FBI investigation against Biden.
What if he says, “Yes I did it. I thought I was getting signals from her that she was hot for me. Tara, I’m so sorry. I’m just clueless many times when it comes to women.”?
That is the one strategy that might actually work.
It reminds me of the one time I saw a guy in politics make this sort of thing go away.
Arnold Schwarznegger at that point in the overcrowded CA gubernatorial race was one of about 17 candidates. IIRC 3 women has surfaced from his early days of doing musclehead movies and accused him of groping them.
Schwarznegger has a press conference on a lawn on a small podium, with his beautiful wife Maria Shriver next to him.
He said, “Yes I did it. I was on a movie set. I though it was playful. I was young and stupid. I had no idea I was hurting anyone and I am deeply sorry and apologize to all these women. But I now know better.”
As we now know, he didn’t really, but at least his subsequent misbehavior was with willing partners.
Welp, Joe’s not playing the Arnold card.
“No, it is not true. I am saying unequivocally, it never, never happened,” Biden said.
I’ed almost bet money that some one else will step forward. Hell, how do we know the post isn’t siting on more accusations?
“Yes, it never, never happened. Also please don’t look too closely at my voting record, or things I might have said at fundraisers, or conversations between myself and a certain ex-president.”
Certainly those things should never be under too close a scrutiny for someone who is currently running for office.
I guess. But thinking someone is hot for you, is not an open ticket to go up and do what was purported.
The MSNBC interview seems to focused on the existence of some record in some archive that they probably know is not there.
Yeah, right. There’s nothing about Reade in my Senate records, so don’t even ask. If there is anything at all it would be in the national archives. So just go right ahead and search through those archives, but the Senate records are definitely off limits. We can even help you search those national archives though, if you want.
“……..At least he is OUR rapist……….”
If anybody is interested in seeing how the Daily Kos but not Daily Kos blogosphere is treating this story, they can head on over to Paul Campos’s post on LGM yesterday (1204 comments). Commenters go after both Reade and Current Affairs’ Nathan Robinson with a vengeance (not so much Katie Halper, who admitted up front she was a Sanders supporter and anti-Biden, so she’s been dismissed ab initio).
How many ways can you twist yourself hither and yon to say “Oh no, she’s lying, she’s confused, she doesn’t remember” when there’s no evidence she’s lying, or confused, or that her memory is failing? The one question neither Campos nor commenters seem to be able to address is “Why would she talk about this now?” She’s a life-long Democrat, hasn’t lost her faculties, and shared what had happened at the time.
I have the same problem rejecting Reade’s story that I had rejecting Blasey Ford’s: there was no benefit whatsoever to be gained. Blasey Ford on the contrary was harassed – she was forced to move something like four times in the wake of the Senate’s confirmation hearings for Kavanaugh – and her life was made absolutely miserable.
When I hear a satisfactory answer to that question – and I haven’t, to date, for either woman – I’ll reconsider.
Anyway, I plan to listen to Biden on Morning Joe in a bit, but what can he have been coached to say, as Yves noted above in the post itself?
In Katie Halper’s interview with Tara Reade, Tara is hesitant to talk about one thing Biden said to her that continues to haunt her. In the end she said it and it was that he said to her, ” you are nothing to me.” And that really is the issue here. Powerful people (a man in this instance) abusing the powerless and discarding them. I would like to hear Joe Biden’s history of employing and promoting women through the years. There has to be real information that could be written about.
He has notebooks, or binders, full of them. Isn’t that out of the politician’s non-phrasebook?
Being Biden, saying ‘you are nothing to me’ must have been something he plagiarised from some other politician.
Where’s the #Whotoo hashtag?
Thank you, Yves.
There’s similar in Blighty, too. It’s not just sexual harassment, but racism, too.
What is worse, some of the journalists, often well to do women, making it their business to dampen interest in, if not distract attention from, such misbehaviour and acting as gatekeepers are looking forward to their next gig, if not already on it. A quartet of journalists in the UK are fronting the acquisition of a recently failed newspaper for action against any threats to certain hierarchies. This is to supplement the likes of the Grauniad, Independent and Statesman. These journalists often work on both sides of the Atlantic.
Big controversy over the U. of Delaware papers. mika is insisting that biden should do a search of those papers which, apparently, were set to be released but then were “resealed.” He is “calling for” a search of personnel records at the National Archives, but is insisting that nothing would be at the U of D so he won’t call for one there.
Pretty unsatisfactory “explanation” of the differences between Kavanaugh accuser and his own in terms of “believing” all women, which is to say no explanation at all.
Interesting comment from a political operative of some sort pre-interview commenting on the statement biden released this morning on Medium–she said “the hairs on the back of her neck stood up” when she heard that biden was calling for a search at the National Archives for any complaints with Reade’s name on it. She said they should search for and release any and all complaints from anybody. Good point, I thought.
Biden’s operatives have already been sent to both U of Delaware and National Archives to comb through those records which leads me to believe they found nothing incriminating at the National Archives but found something to hide at U of Delaware. If there really wasn’t anything substantional at U of D, why wouldn’t Biden just call for them to be released? This whole election cycle has been a joke and a slap in the face to the rapidly shrinking portion of the electorate who still have enough intellectual bandwidth to do their own research on candidates. This country is in the final stage of its collapse. That’s why both parties are so desperate to start a war with China
His answer that “nothing in the U of D files contains personnel records” so there is no need to search them was weak and suspicious. It will be the “Hillary’s emails” of 2020 IMHO. His defense at one point was that they contained personal communications with the president and I was glad at the push back from Mika when she pressed they could just search for her name. He had no answer.
File scrubbing worked for his boss, so why not flatter through imitation!
That seems like the logical read–that there is something to find in Delaware. He was very insistent–he didn’t only say “no” to DE once, he said it over and over.
The way these things go on DNC tv is that the raw meat is tossed out on morning joe, and the narrative is massaged and refined by the lesser personalities during the day to be presented in approved, final form by the marquee players in prime time.
Sometimes I think they are running opinion polls during the day on what to emphasize and what to leave out. If the concluding remarks on morning joe are any indication, U of D is going to be an issue.
No questions at all, btw, on any of Reade’s corroborating friends or her mom’s Larry King call in.
Opinion polls and DNC “influencer” monkeys hammering the retweet button all morning to send #IBelieveBiden to #2 on Twitter’s trending hashtags.
I imagine the State Department has a better handle on who has access to records than the U of Delaware (a big if I suppose), but what are the odds this stuff is sitting at the RNC or in the offices of say Tom Cotton if Trump doesn’t have them. Its also possible loyal Bushies have them and want Trump out for their man in 2024.
Keep in mind, as even mentioned on the National Archives website, “NARA keeps only those Federal records that are judged to have continuing value—about 2 to 5 percent of those generated in any given year.”
Would sexual harassment claims against a congressional member always be included among that 2 to 5%? Who decides in any given year what records “have continuing value”? I can certainly see where congressional members Senior staffers might find ways to keep “complaints” from ever seeing the light of day. Along the same line, what type of records were kept at the U. of Delaware? Are we being set up to believe if allegations were made by various people they will show up in the records only to be told later…see, nothing in the records show anything. I would like to know how complaints against Congressional members have been dealt with over the past 50 years.
Apparently, 1,875 boxes and 415 gigabytes of Senatorial records were given to U. of D.
But no doubt Dementia Joe’s muh-muh-memory of their contents can be trusted. ;)
Biden is looking more and more like a confused old dog being brought on its last trip to the Vet. Even with his current favorable polling I don’t see him beating Trump without a miracle :( As many have pointed out Trump has absolute feral instincts for survival. The Tara Reade issue along with creepy uncle Joe are enough material for Trump to just bludgeon Joe. You add to that all the problems divadab listed above it is not to difficult to see millions of disappointed voters giving up and just not showing up.
Biden will deny this but what is his credibility? He lied openly in the last debate about his record on offering cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and the rest of the social safety net, as well as his role in pushing the Iraq War, and the Crime and Bankruptcy bills. He lied about being a civil rights activist and being arrested in South Africa. He had to drop out of a prior presidential race over plagiarism. And who knows what else. Just think what an attorney could do with this if Biden was on a witness stand.
To a large extent, my sense is the strategy is keeping people who believe Biden is a straight shooter or other nonsense from finding out about Biden. If an “informed voter” is largely a cable new consumer, they know nothing but believe they are different than the average FoxNews denizen (at least they know what they are).
Again, this is largely about margins. Can they afford to offend the informed left? They think they can hence Larry Summers and Anita Dunn, but can they afford to offend the “msm viewer left” or less famous versions of Peter Daou (people who are a few steps behind him in their personal journey)? At that point, they are looking at no one showing up for voter registration.
Anyone watching Joe Scarborough who unironically deems themselves to be a liberal is not exactly on the ball. To even mention it on MSNBC’s White Power Hour means its out there. What if Biden and Sanders are very far apart not just on paths to get to the Promised Land but actual understanding of what this looks like? This is a big deal. Hillary wasn’t running on the difference between Sanders and her “is she gets things done” for the open left. It was for her voters who believe she was lied to about Iraq or don’t even want to acknowledge she bathes in the blood of children.
NotTimothyGeithner
May 1, 2020 at 10:48 am
To a large extent, my sense is the strategy is keeping people who believe Biden is a straight shooter or other nonsense from finding out about Biden
That is cruel, kinda mean, and even vicious….uh, of course, its true…but, c’mon man
That’s the other interesting thread, if one wants to pull at it. Aside from the recent lies, which can be blown off as “mis-remembering” (not agreeing that they should), that he had to drop out in 1988 over plagiarism and lying about credentials should cast serious doubt on Biden’s credibility.
I’m sure old pal Corn Pop could vouch for Biden’s credibility.
The power elite of both main political parties in the US, enabled by the msm, have lost all moral authority. Voting for the lesser of two evils is now a matter of deciding which team of professional liars and equivocators will take what’s left of the broken US carried on the backs of hard working people over the edge of the precipice a little less quickly. Without a moral compass, there is no finding a way out of this. The downward momentun is fierce. The greed for money, power and influence has won.
How long before #MeNeither goes viral?
Krystal and Saagar from Rising has been all over this for almost a month, and covered it quite well IMO. Those two are a breath of fresh air in the media galaxy of smelly poo.
#metoodependingonwho
It’s the sheer amateurishness of this that gets me.
One rule of politics is never to fashion a weapon against your opponent that might blow up in your hand. Another is to make sure that the criteria you use for condemning your opponent are sufficiently flexible that you can twist them to your purposes. Neither was done here.
By choosing, not corruption, for example, which can be proved in court, but personal behaviour in circumstances where no clear evidence-based verdict is ever possible, even in theory, and then by assuming the truth of all accusations under any circumstances at all, the Masters of the Universe probably genuinely thought that they had a weapon for destroying or intimidating any male opposition to their plans. Perhaps they did, but if so they were too stupid to realise that they had weaponised circumstances that do actually occur in real life, and there was a measurable chance that the same circumstances would repeat one day, in a situation where they were not in control.
So now they’ve hurriedly discovered that, in spite of what they said earlier, not everybody’s word is worth the same amount. And they’ve discovered, in spite of what they said earlier, a meaningless concept called “credible” allegations, which in the end depend on whether you subjectively want to believe something or not.
I think there’s something about the arrogance of elites that believe, somehow, that ordinary laws of logic and even politics, don’t apply to them. The same thing happened with the weaponisation of atrocity stories in the 1990s, by western powers. When their own conduct in Afghanistan and Iraq was subject to the same criteria, they went berserk. It’s not even hypocrisy: it’s worse than that.
And these people are claiming to be able to run a country?
Exactly so. It was so entirely predictable that once liberals weaponised these type of allegations into political bludgeons, they’d find them thrown right back at them. And a centrist/left politicians is always more vulnerable to sexual misbehaviour accusations as people kind of assume this sort of behaviour from right wingers (or failing that, they can fall back on the ‘I am a sinner, I repent, let God judge me’ defence). These people are all tactics, but are clueless on strategy.
Dem leaders don’t care. Their followers are just as blind to logic and facts as the Republicans. I mean, look at the Clintons. The so-called feminist party elected Bill, re-elected him and then made his “devoted” wife the nominee. As others have pointed out, no wonder a con man like Obama is a god to them.
The class power dynamic is at play here too. Pelosi held a fake congressional hearing when Rush Limbaugh called a Georgetown Law student a slut. It was performative, but it was about assuring a certain class that Pelosi won’t stand for mean names. The effective outlawing of abortion or a precarious economy where we see a growth in sex workers….Pelosi has a full fridge of ice cream.
Team Blue at the top is heavily weighted towards Republicans who can’t make it in the White Power Party and hope to attract the Republicans who aren’t dedicated to preventing even token representation.
I guess I’ll give Kirsten Gillibrand some credit, even though she’s one of my least favorite senators.
On an issue about which too many MeToo women have been mum, Gillibrand has come right out and said she believes Biden. Given her previous belief of Blasey Ford in the Kavanaugh fiasco, she’s now wide open for charges of hypocrisy and class bias.
But she’s clear and open about it, and that deserves a nod. It also raises the bar for others who will now be called on to speak up.
Still hoping for that VP nod…aw, Kirsten, bless her heart.
What did she poll at? I think it was actually 0% at one point. Maybe never above that?
So, if the DNC has its way, in Nov. we’ll be looking at (D) p***y grabber vs. (R) p***y grabber.
Looks like I’ll be voting for the Green Party candidate again (unless they add “none of these” to the ballot).
You know, Biden could demand that the University of Delaware release his Senate records so people can look for the complaint.
Instead, Democratic Party Karens are now pointing to a passage from a novel that Reide’s father worte claiming that it “Proves” that she is lying.
I totally agree Ms. Reade’s claim of being penetrated by Joe Biden with his hand has resulted in her being sidelined as of no value. She is being ignored and worse, this does nothing but demonstrate what women have always known, those in power will do as they damned well please.
I honestly don’t know what else to do but my hat is off and my head hangs in shame for the people (men included) who suffer sexual abuse and are silence by the inaction of society because I am a part of the society. I am ashamed. Anyway, that this conclusively shows the media bias is unquestioned and real.
My only hope is the outrage being expressed will force investigations. What happens to Joe Biden is immaterial. he’s not the story. She is. And she deserves justice. I’m just so sad she didn’t have the support to report the crime when it happened. especially as it means we would never have even remembered Joe Biden today because his career would have been over.
Thanks for this. As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse myself, I can attest to how life destroying this can be – for Tara, a victim of sexual assault, or anyone else who has experienced someone violating, non-consensually, their personal space. It amounts to a psychological theft of innocent experience. The world is full of that tho, as our social and distributional arrangements are low on the totem pole of macroeconomic importance. We can always be better.
This story provides yet another instance to soberly reflect on ourselves and the systems of power which enable these types of behavior in the first place. The title of that show ‘Arrested Development’ always comes to mind as being an apt description of our current collective consciousness.
From the posting: “And it echoes the division among progressives when the #MeToo movement revived scrutiny of Clinton’s own alleged sexual misconduct.”
This is one of the things that is, errrr, breath-taking about Hillary Clinton’s endorsement of Biden. There’s her own serial rapist, Bill. And there’s her well-documented oh-so-deep sympathy and sisterhood for Monica Lewinsky.
And having all of the nice Democratic Party ladies bleating that it just didn’t happen is like something out of George Orwell.
Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi will be telling us all that the excrement sandwich is served, that there’s excrement-flavored gelato for dessert in her fridge, and that we all know how to vote, now don’t we? Otherwise, something bad will happen to RBG.
A larger question here is this, which Yves Smith mentions up top about MeToo: If U.S. feminism, as currently constituted, is only about what upper-middle-class white women want, then what is its purpose? Besides forcing us all to have to read columns by Rebecca Solnit…
U.S. feminism, aka the women’s movement, has always been devoted to the upper middle class.
A friend, Esther Ybarra Kaw, was a representative to the first National Organization for Women’s national executive board.
Guess what her complaint was? There was no support for issues related to the middle class, economically poor or women of color.
Maybe NOW believed in the trickle down theory.
Well, the story just gets curiouser and curiouser. This is an actual headline from yesterday’s Slate: “Biden Announces That Accused Sex Creep and Sex Creep Enabler Christopher Dodd Will Help Him Pick a Running Mate”
In case you are wondering, author Ben Mathis-Lilly was not favorably impressed.
Out of curiosity, Merf56, how do you interpret footnote 1, above? Edit: hmm, seems Merf got zapped, perhaps for not reading the article.
Of course I read the article. It has a number of incorrect items. I imagine I was deleted because someone( guess) didn’t like what I said. And so it goes.
Funny that squelching an opinion one doesn’t like and accusing the other side of doing the same… there is no end to the irony.
I find it particularly telling as I am a professional woman just like the blog owner but when I have a strong opinion that differs with many mine is discounted. The blog owner argues with the men here but deletes a peer. I have experiences that for years with men but when women behave the same It is sad. And a bit pathetic they have ingrained the same male dismissiveness.
Sometimes one tweet says it all-
‘Matt Walsh
@MattWalshBlog
Lol. The same people who tweeted who once tweeted #BelieveWomen are now tweeting #IBelieveBiden’
https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1256229614898339841
Weirdly, DemocracyNow was interviewing Rich McHugh and Lynda LaCosse at approximately the same time as the softball interview of Biden. Biden stuck to his two points: “it never happened” and “look at the National archives” and his eyes were blinking crazily when lying. He was absolutely unbelievable.
Rich McHugh noted that he had discussed this with people at the national archives and was told they would not have such a complaint in their records.
Of course, the interview was a snow-job. Biden was never questioned at all about the various allegations made by Reade aside from the rape. Why he wanted her to serve drinks, why he wanted her to deliver a gym bag to him at the Capitol, why she was demoted (this was corroborated by a person who McHugh had talked to). He was not questioned, let alone pressed, about his feelings about her at the time, whether he thought she was beautiful or attractive, how frequently he had encounters with her, etc. It was the most pathetic interview imaginable.
McHugh also noted that the evidence supporting Reade has mounted higher and higher. LaCosse, who said she will vote for Biden, said she believed Reade “100%” and explained the circumstances under which Reade revealed the rape to her in 1995 or 1996 when they were neighbors and friends. There is a woman who wishes to remain anonymous (who wouldn’t) who was interviewed by McHugh, and has been by others as well, who Reade told at the time. Another woman who was an intern in Biden’s office was supervised by Reade and suddenly without any apparent reason in April of 1993 she had a different supervisor. And, of course, now thanks to larry King we can hear the corroborating voice of her mother back in 1993.
Reade is totally believable in both of the interviews I have heard and Biden is not at all believable.
Oddly or not. It reminds me of the WMD issue. Who to believe the NYT or Scott Ritter and the truth-tellers? It’s not that difficult to figure out if there is someone who really wants to get to the truth and if there is a way to access that voice. I heard Ritter on MSNBC’s Phil Donahue show before it was canceled.