Quote:
Originally Posted by BullDog
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/01/opini...rod/index.html
When it became clear that Barack Obama would be the nominee of the Democratic Party in the spring of 2008, he commissioned a team of lawyers to begin an in-depth vetting process of potential candidates for vice president.
Dozens of women and men under consideration were reviewed. Those who rose on the list of contenders were subject to a deep-dive investigation of their strengths, vulnerabilities and, of course, any disqualifying defects.
At the top of the list of those contenders was Senator Joseph R. Biden of Delaware.
The comprehensive vet certainly would have turned up any formal complaints filed against Biden during his 36-year career in the Senate. It did not. The team would have investigated any salacious rumors of the sort that travel far and wide in Washington. There were none.
While I was not on the vetting team, as senior strategist to the campaign, I was briefed on their work and potential problems.
Through that entire process, the name Tara Reade never came up. No formal complaint. No informal chatter. Certainly, no intimation of sexual harassment or assault from her or anyone else. The team of investigators, expert in their work, would not have missed it.
Reade did not surface her allegations of a criminal sexual assault when Biden was a candidate for president in 2008, nor did she offer them confidentially to the Obama vetting team when Biden emerged as a principal contender for vice president later that year.
Had any credible issue been raised, you can be sure Biden would not have been the nominee. Obama would not have tolerated it, even if he and Biden were close then, which they were not. Their friendship grew only after Biden joined the ticket and through their eight-year partnership in the White House. At that time, they were distant Senate colleagues and most recently rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Our society is just now confronting a long, sordid history of disregarding accusations and silencing women who were sexually abused or assaulted. Women who come forward deserve to be taken seriously and treated with respect, and Tara Reade's story should be heard and thoroughly investigated.
But it is striking that when an experienced vetting team put Biden under a microscope before he was chosen to be second-in-line for the presidency, neither her allegations, nor anything resembling them in Biden's history, showed up.
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I don't think this argument, 'It would have come up in our vetting process', holds water today. Until, oh... about five minutes ago when #Me Too swept our world, a subordinate woman's claims about a powerful man's caddish or criminal behavior towards her carried no weight at all. Zero. End of discussion. It was the woman who suffered the consequences if she dared to speak up. No, it wouldn't have come up in the vetting process. Had it come up, it would have been dismissed. I remember speaking to some straight men I worked with about Bill Clinton's behavior towards women. They were slightly amused. One co-worker told me that Clinton's clearly caddish behavior made him respect Clinton more as a man. Because that's the way a strong man behaves.
Did Biden commit sexual assault? I don't think the fact that Tara Reade claimed it happened in the Senate hallway seems ridiculous. I once came upon my boss sexually assaulting his cousin in the hallway of the movie studio where we were working. There were no repercussions to him, but I demonstrably lost plenty of work for talking about it. In my opinion, doing it in a public place was part of his power dynamic. "I can do whatever I want, wherever I want.' (Needless to say, the cousin continued on as if nothing ever happened, probably because it was long term behavior.)
I don't think there's any contradiction between Biden's championship and support of women and his choice to assault one. They're not mutually exclusive because people are complicated. Elliot Spitzer championed women professionally and abused them privately, too.
Reade told others about her experience, and they attest to it. That's an important fact, and it gives her allegations plenty of weight. Had this been an allegation against someone who isn't poised to evict that evil rust stain from the White House before he defecates in every corner, we would have no reason to doubt the allegation.
I'm voting for Biden, and I would still vote for him even if Reade produced a semen stained dress. Trump endangers us all every single day. The stakes are high and our choices are limited.