Pages

Saturday, May 23, 2020

Believing Reade, Voting for Biden

One thing the Biden campaign has managed to do, inadvertently, to be sure, is rip the mask off the hypocrisy of the #MeToo movement.

People who, until Tara Reade emerged to tell her sordid tale of a traumatic hallway encounter with then Senator Joe Biden, insisted that women don't make up these stories of harassment and assault, and that every woman who makes such allegations should be believed, are now implicitly asserting that, well, every woman who accuses a Republican should be believed.

Moreover, feminists on the left justified their attempted destruction of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's reputation and career by declaring that the mere accusation that he had made unwelcome and aggressive advances upon a young woman, though he was at the time a teenager, rendered him unfit to serve on the nation's highest court.

Then came former Biden staffer and current Bernie Sanders supporter Tara Reade with allegations of having been pinned against a wall and "digitally penetrated" by Joe Biden for whom she worked as a staffer while Mr. Biden was serving in the Senate in the 1990s. Her account may be true or it may not be, but it's far more credible than that of Christine Blasey Ford, Brett Kavanaugh's accuser, and besides women just don't make this stuff up.

So what are we hearing from the women who were outraged that anyone would be skeptical of Ms Ford's testimony against Mr. Kavanaugh?

One feminist author, Linda Hirshman, acknowledges that, well, she believes Tara Reade, but she'll vote for Biden anyway. Apparently, sexual assault is only disqualifying when the perpetrator was a teenager presently seeking a seat on the Supreme Court and not when he's a fifty-something U.S. Senator presently seeking to be president of the United States.

Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Amy Klobuchar, all of whom skewered Kavanaugh and all of whom hope to be Biden's choice for running mate, have said essentially the same thing. So has Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.

Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein who was a fierce denouncer of Brett Kavanaugh simply on the say-so of Christine Blasey Ford who testified with no supporting evidence that a young Mr. Kavanaugh wrestled her to a bed and momentarily climbed on top of her at a party now claims not to believe Tara Reade's account of what happened to her in a senate corridor. Ms. Feinstein evidently has amended the "Believe All Women" slogan to read "Believe Some Women When it Suits Our Purposes."

Perhaps the prize for most egregious expression of support for Biden no matter what he did, or does, goes to a columnist for the far-left journal The Nation named Katha Pollitt. Ms Pollitt declared recently that she "would vote for Joe Biden if he boiled babies and ate them." Another political Progressive, casting all moral principle and common sense to the wind, promised that he/she "would vote for Biden even if he raped 100 women at gunpoint."

It was only a few short years ago that the left was excoriating Trump voters, especially Christian Trump supporters, for lacking all principles. How soon they forget their own outrage.

In any case, when people on the left express moral outrage over some issue or other you can pretty much bet that their outrage, like Florida's Lake Okeechobee, is miles wide and only inches deep. These are not people of principle, they're political opportunists who wield outrage as a convenient weapon for intimidating others into giving them their way.

They can turn it on and off at will.

Biden may be guilty or he may be innocent, but it's blatant hypocrisy to ignore the allegations against him after having savaged Brett Kavanaugh for having done less than the molestation of which Mr. Biden is accused. And it's worse than hypocrisy to admit that they believe that he probably did what he's accused of, but even if he'd done worse, even though it would've disqualified Kavanaugh, it doesn't change their support for Biden.