Posted on 04/03/2019 4:39:43 AM PDT by billorites
Addressing charges that Joe Biden behaved inappropriately toward former Nevada legislator Lucy Flores, a spokesperson for the likely presidential candidate said, “Neither then, nor in the years since, did he or the staff with him at the time have an inkling that Ms. Flores had been at any time uncomfortable, nor do they recall what she describes.” Flores has alleged that, at a 2014 campaign appearance, then-Vice President Biden leaned in behind her, “inhaled” her hair, and “proceeded to plant a big slow kiss on the back of my head.” She described behavior that’s (at least) creepy, and goes well beyond what could be expected even of a “tactile” politician such as Biden. On the other hand, there appears to be no video of the interaction between Biden and Flores, and no witness has come forth to corroborate her account. As a prominent Bernie Sanders supporter in 2016 who seems eager to back a non-Biden candidate in 2020, Flores might have a political motive to exaggerate her recollection. Going on the evidence that now exists, her charge is hard to evaluate.
According to the standards of culpability that Biden has articulated in similarly conflicted situations, however, it’s an open-and-shut case. Perhaps no major American political figure has so consistently championed the erosion of due process for those accused of sexual misconduct. Even if Flores’s claims might be unprovable, distorted, or simply wrong, changing the culture about sexual misconduct and mistreatment of women requires that we accept her version of events. Biden will now learn firsthand how the mantra of “believe all survivors” has the effect of presuming the guilt of the accused.
Biden has certainly championed this approach for accused college students, as the Obama administration used Title IX to impose guilt-tilting procedures on the nation’s campuses. Until 2016, high-ranking administration officials consistently refused to provide much, if any, explanation on why they imposed a preponderance-of-evidence (a hair over 50 percent) standard; discouraged colleges from granting accused students the right to cross-examination; or demanded that schools let accusers appeal not-guilty findings.
Biden has been the most outspoken senior Obama administration figure to defend these policies. In a 2017 appearance at George Mason University, he framed campus sexual assault as a problem consisting solely of male attackers and female victims: “Guys, a woman who is dead drunk cannot consent—You are raping her! We’ve got to talk about this. Consent requires affirmative consent! . . . If you can’t get her to say ‘yes’ because she wants to, you ain’t much.” He used an interview with Teen Vogue to give a hypothetical address to fraternity members: “If you see a brother taking a drunk freshman coed up the stairs to his room and you do nothing, you’re a coward . . . You know that she’s not able to give consent.”
Biden responded with fury to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s attempts to create fairer procedures for adjudicating campus sexual-assault claims. In a September 2017 conference call with victims’-rights activists, the former vice president derided DeVos’s supporters as “culturally Neanderthals.” Biden’s approach to campus sexual misconduct effectively reverses Blackstone’s central premise of common law: to undo the injustices of the past, this new tenet holds, it is better that 10 innocents suffer than one clearly guilty student escape. If this approach requires a presumption of guilt that sweeps up the innocent and the almost-certainly innocent as well as the guilty, that’s a price that society (and, of course, the innocent) must pay.
Biden’s current situation recalls that of former senator Al Franken, who bitterly criticized DeVos’s Title IX policies, only to flail about in defending himself against allegations (mostly less serious than what Biden faces) of sexual misconduct. Ideologically boxed in, Franken could not defend himself by challenging his accusers’ veracity, lest he appear to reject the party’s consensus about believing all complainants.
In an ideal world, Joe Biden would use his new experience as an accused party to champion fairer treatment across the board. More likely, he’ll fall back on a double standard, demanding that he receive the benefit of the doubt denied to others—especially students with far less power than he possesses.
Biden co-authored VAWA which created an effective presumption of guilt for any man accused of domestic violence. Scr#w him.
Only Biden’s wife knows what to expect from her “stimulated” husband .....when Biden gets home after one of his sniffing sessions.
Only Biden’s wife knows what to expect from her “stimulated” husband .....when Biden gets home after one of his sniffing sessions.
Turning Alinsky tactics back on the Democrats who sleep and breath them is perhaps my favorite feature of Trump-era politics.
The left is turning on him because they don’t want him to run for president.
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Exactly. As someone put it he’s male, pale, and stale. They will never let Biden get the nomination.
EXCERPT National Review’s Jim Geraghty admits he “reacted with great cynicism” when he read Lucy Flores’ account of her encounter with Joe Biden. After all, she’s “a Bernie Sanders supporter who is making an issue out of Joe Biden’s characteristically buffoonish behavior, five years after the fact, in a fairly transparent effort to scare him out” of the presidential race.
But that “the degree to which allegations of inappropriate behavior or sexual misconduct are taken seriously” depends on “how important the accused is to the cause of progressivism at that given moment.” Al Franken, Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner and Eric Schneiderman were all forced out.
But “when a Democrat’s resignation might lead to a Republican taking his place,” a lot of people “start looking at their feet or otherwise averting their eyes.”
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