No not at all. One who makes an accusation based on a lie is making a baseless accusation. One who makes an accusation based on an unprovable truth is NOT making a baseless accusation. They are making an accusation that is simply unprovable.
For example if one alone witnesses a murder, accuses the murderer but can't prove his accusation, his accusation is not baseless. A baseless accusation is one that is based on a falsehood.
For another example, if a bear poops in the woods and only one person sees it, and reports it, then the bear pooping is still fact, and the person reporting it is not making a baseless claim, but only an unprovable claim.
The word "baseless" is not rendered meaningless as you claim. Is can be used when one can prove a false accusation.
The problem with that statement is that it assumes a conclusion that cannot be made. How do you know whether the accusation is based on a lie, vs being based on an unprovable truth? You only know that by evaluating the claim -- so you can't use the claim to evaluate the claim, so there is no meaning of the word "baseless" if you apply it here.
Cain SAYS he told Anderson, and therefore Anderson knew. On what "basis" does Cain make that claim? Solely on the basis that Cain SAYS he remembers telling Anderson. And on what "basis" does Cain make THAT claim? Solely on the basis that Cain SAYS he knows that he remembers telling Anderson. Do you see the internal reference, the circularity of the argument? The only basis for the claim is the claim; but the claim cannot be a basis for itself.
So, is Cain lying, or is he just stating an "unprovable truth"? Only Cain knows. You don't know. I don't know. There is no logical method to determine the answer. It is impossible to logically distinguish between "lie" and "unprovable truth". Therefore, the argument of "baseless" is meaningless. The claim is baseless, because it is based only on itself.
If you had a lie detector that was known to be accurate, and hooked up Anderson and Cain, then we'd have a basis for determining whether Cain was being truthful or not. If the lie detector showed Cain believed he was being truthful, then there would be a basis for the claim -- it would not be baseless.
It still wouldn't be proven -- you'd only know that Cain BELIEVED he was telling the truth, not that the conversation actually took place. But the claim would not be baseless, because you'd have a piece of evidence, the lie detector test, to back it up.
But even if you knew Cain to be generally truthful, that doesn't provide a basis for the claim, because ANYBODY can tell a lie at any time, even if they never lie.
Maybe the problem is that there is circumstantial evidence that doesn't DISPROVE the claim. If I said I told politico, but could not provide any evidence that I would have known the story, or that I had any opportunity to talk to politico, my claim would have less of a likelyhood of truth than Cain's claim. Clearly Cain did know the story, and he did have access to Anderson to tell him.
Does that give the story a "basis"? I would say not, because it just sets up the circumstances under which the story COULD be true, but does nothing to show that the story IS true. It is easier to discount a story than to find truth.
TO illustrate the practicality of this view of claims, let's look one more time at the Cain/Anderson dispute. Cain says he told Anderson. The circumstances would allow it. Anderson says Cain never told him. How do we evaluate?
Do we look at everything Cain and Anderson have ever done, and decide which one is more likely to tell the truth? That's good for guessing a probability of outcome, but worthless in determining the truth. A liar can tell the truth, a truthful person can lie. Likelyhood is great if you are determining what outcome might be better to bet on, but is worthless for knowing what the truth is.
To get closer to the truth, we look for evidence. Obviously, Cain's statement and Anderson's statements are not evidence, because if they were, that evidence would help determine the truth. (Note that if Anderson had confirmed Cain's statement, THAT would be evidence, because it would not be an independent claim, but rather a dependent verification of Cain's claim).
What did Cain do to provide evidence for his claim? NOTHING. He simply asserted it. And when he was asked again, he actually weakened his claim, he now says he is "almost certain" he told him, where before he said he told him. Tomorrow me might say he is pretty sure. I would note also in this "almost certain" statement, rather than pointing to his own recollection, he offered a logical argument that it would make SENSE for him to have told, and it would make SENSE for Anderson to have asked. Neither of those arguments were evidence either.
What COULD have Cain done? Maybe nothing, because Cain cut off all chance of corroboration by claiming nobody heard him. Which is very convenient if you want to lie about something.
What did Anderson offer? He had a slightly easier time. He pointed out that nobody has ever heard the story from Anderson. He ordered every reporter he ever talked to to reveal ANYTHING he said about Cain.
If Anderson knew the story, there is a reasonable chance he would have told it sometime -- but nobody has come forward to say Anderson told them; that is inferential evidence that Anderson is telling the truth. If ONE person came forward and said Anderson told them, that would be direct evidence that Cain is telling the truth.
Last note though: Finding such a person would not CHANGE the fact that Cain made a baseless claim, because when Cain MADE the claim, he provided NO independent basis for us to evaluate the claim. That someone might come forward and give us evidence would show the claim is no longer baseless, it wouldn't change the fact that the claim was baseless when it was made.
If we are just getting hung up on the word "baseless", and maybe I am, the point I am making is that Cain offered his claim with no independent evidence of any kind, only his own word, which he could have trivially been a lie. It is easy for him to SAY he told Anderson when he didn't. That he said it proves nothing. Cain had no evidence for his charge, so his charge was "baseless", or "unsupported". In fact, his charge has less of a basis than the women's claims, because in their case Cain has verified that some things happened, and the dispute is over the interpretation. I believe Cain's interpretation, of course.