Friday, May 1, 2020

Democrat Shocked, Shocked to Find Double Standard in Press

From Buzzfeed, but excerpted by John Sexton:
"It was really devastating when [Kirsten] Gillibrand and Stacey Abrams and Hillary Clinton, all on the same day, just basically implied my story wasn’t true and they believe Joe Biden. I can't describe to you what that felt like," Reade said on Thursday, describing herself as a "lifelong Democrat" and particularly a fan of Abrams, the former Georgia state minority leader who has been campaigning to serve on the ticket with Biden as his vice presidential nominee...
"I used to think that a Republican talking point was to call the mainstream media biased," Reade said. 'So I used to think, ‘Oh, that's just a talking point for them. I don’t believe it.' But now I'm living it, real time, and I see it -- like, I see it for what it is. Because I am a Democrat, or I was. But now I'm not anything, really. I'm politically homeless."
...
The TV network that has asked her on most frequently, she said, has been Fox News, from which she said Thursday she’d received four or more invitations to come on air. Only in the last day or two have other TV networks expressed interest; Reade said early on Thursday that she had just received and was discussing an invitation from ABC News, had been contacted by MSNBC that morning, and CBS News had reached out to her the previous night.
Reade had kept saying no to Fox because she believed, correctly, that the leftwing media would use a Fox interview as evidence this was nothing but a "rightwing" set-up. Despite her being a lifelong Democrat, former Biden aide, and Elizabeth Warren supporter.
The only reason networks other than Fox reached out to her is because Ben Smith embarrassed them by noting the liberal media had pulled the same embargo tactic on Juanita Broadderick in 1999. . . 
Stacy McCain,  Biden Accuses Tara Reade of Lying, because of course he does.
Joe Biden expects us to accept that the #BelieveAllWomen standard that applied to Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers does not apply to Democrats:
. . .“From the very beginning, I’ve said believing the woman means taking the claim seriously, and then it’s vetted, looked into,” said Biden. “Women have a right to be heard, and the press should rigorously investigate claims they make. I’ll always uphold that principle. But in the end the truth is what matters. And these claims are false.”
The presumptive Democratic presidential candidate is misrepresenting his past statements. He absolutely did not take the position that “believing women means taking the claim seriously.” (And if that‘s what believe-all-victims means, why not just say that instead?)
. . .
Caught in an obvious contradiction, Biden then tried to say that victims should be believed until contrary evidence emerges.
“Women are to be believed, given the benefit of the doubt,” said Biden. “If they come forward and say something happened to them, they should start with the presumption they are telling the truth. Then you have to look at the facts.
“What I said during the Kavanaugh hearings was she had a right to be heard,” Biden continued. “And she came forward, the presumption would be she’s telling the truth unless it’s proved she wasn’t telling the truth, or unless it’s clear from the facts surrounding it that it isn’t the truth.”
For some reason, Biden seems to think his denial constitutes proof that Reade is lying, whereas in 2018, Kavanaugh’s denials proved nothing.
In other words, only Democrats should be given the benefit of the doubt.

Later, Stick a Fork in Joe Biden
He is done:

New Biden Accuser: He ComplimentedMy Breasts When I Was 14 Years Old

Can she prove this? She says there were witnesses:
“When it was Biden and my aunt’s turn to say hello he quickly turned to me and asked how old I was. I replied with my age and he replied with the comment ‘Fourteen? You’re very well endowed for 14!’ I was confused but it was definitely weird, he looked me up and down and hovered his eyes on my chest so I had some clue [about] the notion of his comment but didn’t fully understand at the time. We quickly separated from his area after the encounter.”
Could it be argued that this is defensible? Were her breasts so unusually large that Biden’s expression of astonishment was justified? I mean, in the interests of bipartisanship and, uh . . . due process rights, should we give the old guy a break if she was sporting 38DDs in ninth grade?

Never mind. I suspect my Republican readers are not in a mood to be tolerant of Biden’s idiosyncrasies, but the question is whether Democrats believe it’s OK for a U.S. Senator to remark on the size of a 14-year-old’s breasts, no matter how astonishingly large they might be.

My hunch is that this is just one more shoe dropping, in what will quickly become an avalanche of accusations against Biden. It’s kind of like what happened with Roy Moore. The guy had been in public life in Alabama for decades, and I’d followed Moore’s career since the 1990s, and never heard a word of any inappropriate behavior by him. Then all at once, Moore was accused by a half-dozen women of having harassed them when they were teenagers in the 1970s and ’80s. This avalanche effect has toppled many prominent men in the #MeToo era; once the first accusation of misconduct is made, the accusers seem to come out of the woodwork. One day you’re a senator or a movie star or a network news anchor, and next thing you know Gloria Allred’s holding a press conference with weeping “survivors” and your career’s over.
Linked at Pirate's Cove in the daily If All You See…

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