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There has been a “credible” accusation of rape against former Vice President Joe Biden.  I write “credible,” because we are in a brave new world, a world constructed by D/S/Cs where all women must absolutely be believed, particularly when their accusations, no matter how implausible, are lodged against Republicans.  On the rare occasions when a woman goes off the reservation and accuses a D/S/C they, and their accusations, must be buried.  As Kurt Schlichter said, in the case of Joe Biden, they’re not going to like the new rules they’ve imposed on us all.


We visit Robby Soave at Reason.com for background on the accusation:

When it comes to #MeToo sexual misconduct issues, former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic Party’s presumptive 2020 presidential nominee, has made it no secret where he stands: automatically believe women.

“For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you’ve got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she’s talking about is real,” said Biden during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who faced accusations that as a teenager he had assaulted a woman at a party.

As vice president, Biden played an important role in the Obama administration’s efforts to compel colleges and universities to take sexual violence more seriously—and to adopt policies that limited the due process rights and presumption of innocence for the accused. In recent years, his rhetoric on these issues has been in lockstep with #MeToo activists.

[skip] But now the former vice president is facing a much more serious accusation of sexual assault, from an alleged former staffer named Tara Reade. [skip]

Reade describes herself as a ‘California-based victim rights advocate and activist’ in her interview with the journalist Katie Halper, who has helped bring this accusation to light. Reade says she worked for Biden in the early 1990s and asserts that she was unambiguously assaulted by him in 1993. According to Reade, he began kissing her without her permission, pushed her against a wall, reached under her skirt, and penetrated her with his fingers.

‘He said ‘come on man, I heard you liked me,’ Reade recalled to Halper in the interview. ‘For me, it was like, everything shattered. I looked up to him, he was like my father’s age, he was this champion of women’s rights, in my eyes. I couldn’t believe it was happening. It was surreal.’

Reade had already complained to her bosses about sexual harassment in Biden’s office—she said a supervisor had once asked her to serve drinks at an event because she had attractive legs—but had shared the more serious accusation against Biden with a few close confidants. She said she once tried to talk to a supervisor about what had happened, but this person shut her down before she could tell the whole story. She also said she filled out an official form detailing her assault, but does not know what became of it.

Unlike Christine Blasey Ford, Reade actually did tell others about the assault at the time it occurred, and other sources have confirmed that those people recall she did.

A year ago, Reade—who supported the campaigns of Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.)—attempted to come forward with stories of sexual harassment in Biden’s offices. As detailed in an Intercept piece, she reached out to Time’s Up, a project of the National Women’s Law Center that provides support to alleged #MeToo victims. Time’s Up declined to assist Reade; the organization’s official excuse was that a feud with a national political candidate could jeopardize their status as a 501(c)(3) non-partisan group. But as The Intercept also notes:

The public relations firm that works on behalf of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund is SKDKnickerbocker, whose managing director, Anita Dunn, is the top adviser to Biden’s presidential campaign. A spokesperson for Biden declined to comment. The SKDK spokesperson assigned to Time’s Up referred questions back to the NWLC.

Imagine that: a “women’s” support organization refusing to help a women assaulted by a D/S/C/.  This poses a quandary for the D/S/C establishment.  Prof. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection notes:  

 Joe Biden is an irreparably damaged candidate.

He’s just not all there. Anyone who doesn’t see that is blind or wilfully blind. Or a Biden campaign consultant feeding at the trough.

D/S/Cs, knowing Biden’s faculties are disintegrating before the public’s eyes, are desperately searching for another messiah, and Andrew Cuomo, for the moment, seems to be deified.  They can use Reade’s accusation as a convenient vehicle to force Biden out, but if they do, they’ve surrendered the D/S/C immunity they’ve denied their political enemies.  If their own presidential front runner, the presumed nominee, can be forced out on mere allegations from decades ago—as they tried to do with Justice Kavanaugh—none of them are safe from contemporaneous allegations.  And if they get rid of Biden, what of Bernie Sanders?  In case you were wondering, gentle readers, why he hasn’t bowed out, he smells blood in the political waters stirred up not only by Biden’s obvious mental failings, but by Reade’s allegations, and who knows what other scandals are waiting in the wings?  To find all of my writings on the Kavanaugh case, enter “kavanaugh” in the SMM homepage search bar.

In other photos, Joe’s hands are much higher…

How has the media been handling Reade’s allegation?  How have the champions of #metoo, and “believe all women” treated her?  Newsbusters.org explains:

It’s been nearly a week since former Joe Biden staffer Tara Reade leveled disturbing accusations of sexual misconduct against the Democratic presidential frontrunner, and yet ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC and CNN haven’t said a single word about them.

While you may think that’s only because of the ongoing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, think again: In that same time period, CNN, MSNBC and NBC have hosted Biden for a total of three interviews (including an hour-long town hall on CNN), and no host asked even a single question about these new charges.

Compare that to how those same networks raced to promote misconduct charges against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. A reminder: Kavanaugh was accused of assaulting Christine Blasey Ford at a high school party in 1982; she talked about the alleged incident publicly for the first time when Kavanaugh’s nomination was before the Senate. Kavanaugh completely denied the accusation.

But in the twelve days following the first reports of Ford’s claim, the ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news shows churned out 305 minutes of coverage. Only a scant amount of that airtime — less than five minutes — mentioned that none of the witnesses named by Ford would confirm her story.

Keep in mind that even a 30 second mention of any story on a newscast is significant airtime.

Besides the broadcast networks, CNN and MSNBC dished out uncounted hours of coverage, all based on the premise that Ford was telling the truth and that Kavanaugh was a guilty liar.

credit: newsfeed.time.com

They certainly believe Blasey Ford despite the many lies she told, and the fact that not only did none of the people she claimed witnessed the events she vaguely described confirm her story, but at least one thought she was lying and revealed that she was being threatened to lie to help Ford.  The media wouldn’t have two standards in these matters, would they?

Since Reade went public, candidate Biden has given long interviews, including: an hour-long CNN town hall on March 27, where he faced 23 questions (13 from CNN’s Anderson Cooper, ten others submitted by audience members); nine minutes on NBC’s Meet the Press on March 29, where he faced nine questions from moderator Chuck Todd; and nearly a quarter-hour on Monday’s MSNBC Live with Katy Tur, where he faced an additional nine questions.

Out of 41 total questions, Biden didn’t face a single one about his new accuser — not exactly the Kavanaugh treatment.

Let us, gentle readers, briefly consider two approaches to this matter, the legal and political.  Back in 2015, I wrote Rape Investigation: Reality v Narrative, which explored the very real difficulties police and prosecutors have in successfully prosecuting rape allegations.  Among the most daunting problems is that of witness credibility.

Note the girl’s body language…

In this case, Reade appears to have greater credibility that Blasey Ford, however, legally speaking, this case is dead in the water.  The statute of limitations has certainly expired. There is no physical evidence, and no documentary evidence apparently exists.  It is likely the documents related to Reade’s long ago formal complaint were disappeared almost immediately. And of course, this is not just a D/S/C thing, as we’ve learned there has long been a congressional slush fund to pay off victims of the sexual indiscretions of congress critters of both parties.

Even without the statute of limitations problem, any police officer investigating the complaint would be limited to interviews of those Reade told many years ago.  Even if they had clear memories of what she told them, that is still weak tea where probable cause is concerned.  It’s likely they’d do a complete investigation and turn everything over to the local prosecutor, who would then have to determine if they could prove a rape charge beyond a reasonable doubt in court.

One of the common elements of rape is penetration, whether by penis, fingers, or other instrument, so the rape statutes would likely apply. But this would be not only a “he said/she said” case, but an ancient version of that genre.  Even if we assume the prosecutor wanted to be seen as a champion of women, and even if we assume Reade would be an effective witness, without far more evidence, and compelling evidence, than is in the public domain, this case would never go to trial.

Does she look pleased to have Joe’s hands on her?

Politically, however, it’s another story.  The Kavanaugh precedent, and the Clarence Thomas precedent—Biden is largely responsible for that one—make it possible that Biden could be politically destroyed on mere accusation.  Republicans, for all their faults, tend not to engage in such unseemly character assassination on the congressional level, but the precedent is there should they choose to use it.  And isn’t it interesting that D/S/Cs have a very real political interest in doing a Kavanaugh on Biden?  However, they probably won’t, and they can get away with it because their media propaganda arm will cover for them, as it is already reflexively doing.

On one hand, I have long advocated caution in such cases.  Women do, in fact, lie about rape.  They do it for as many reasons as there are grains of sand in a beach, including for political advantage.  Allegations of rape and all manner of other kinds of sexual impropriety are easily made, and even if disproven, damage the innocent accused for the rest of their lives.  No arrest should be made without convincing evidence reaching the probable cause standard, and no charges should be filed without a reasonable likelihood of being able to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.  Politics should play no part in such decisions.

credit: baylorfans.com

On the other, we have Joe Biden, who has a long and sordid history of pawing little girls and women.  Joe Biden, whose female members of his Secret Service protection detail were disgusted by his insistence on swimming naked in their presence.  Joe Biden, who recently told of his delight in children stroking his hairy legs and sitting on his lap, Gropin’ Joe Biden who had to acknowledge his groping, publically apologize for it, and promise to do it no more.  Politically, he is far from pure where this kind of charge is concerned.  It would be poetic justice if this allegation were to destroy his presidential chances.  That would be a just application of the new rules D/S/Cs have demanded others not only accept but praise.  It might be fun to virtue signal, but Republicans have never waged a “war on women,” and are generally more forgiving and somewhat less politically opportunistic.

At the least, the media should give Reade the same kind of public exposure they so willingly gave Christine Blasey Ford.  They should do it honestly, without spin, and let the public decide.

Of course, they’ll be doing that just as soon as pigs fly, so as always, normal Americans will have to judge Joe Biden’s character and abilities on their own.  Fortunately, he’s helping them do just that.