2020 US General Election Thread VI: Covid for VP!

[New Socialist South Africa]

Accidentally put this in the MAGAthread... so now posted here.

Re: 2020 election (and beyond):
- Biden will pick Kamala Harris as his VP (because the Dems need to be seen to practice what they preach about women and minorities).
- He'll win in November (though by a narrower margin than predicted/expected - it'll come down to Wisconsin!)
- Ohio will end its trend as the bellwether state, backing Trump over winner Biden.
- More women will come forward with sexual harassment/assault claims against Biden (both during the election and while in office).
- Biden's presidency will be marked by lacklustre, unambitious policy and personal damage control.
- Democrat infighting (especially from the left of the party) will prove more debilitating than Republican opposition; moderate Republican gains at midterms.
- Biden, if he sees out the term, cites age and announces early on (maybe after those uncomfortable but not Obama level catastrophic midterms) that he won't run in 2024.
- VP Harris becomes favorite for 2024 Dem nomination (no guarantee).
- Pence, Cruz, and Second Try Romney (possibly with Nikki Haley in the mix) all set out their stalls early for the 2024 Republican nomination.
- Hmm maybe first female POTUS in 2024.

Seems pretty plausible for the most part. Romney running again is the one thing that definitely won't happen. Cruz might run but I doubt he gets anywhere. Hawley and especially DeSantis are promising candidates besides Haley.

Nah, I think Romney is delusional enough to think he can win, and he might make another run at it. I think part of the reason he ran for senate in Utah and voted to impeach Trump was so he can try set himself up as the "anti-Trump" vote after Trump leaves office, either when he loses to Biden in November, or when he leaves having served his two terms in 2024. I think Romney is quietly hoping Biden crushes Trump in November, so he can emerge as the "anti-Trump" "return to normalcy" candidate in the Republican Party in 2024.

If that is his plan he would be mistaken, both in thinking that the 2020 election will be a landslide loss for Trump (I think it will be very close regardless of who wins), or that he has a chance of becoming the nominee in a post-Trump Republican Party.

[Aureumterra]

Accidentally put this in the MAGAthread... so now posted here.

Re: 2020 election (and beyond):
- Biden will pick Kamala Harris as his VP (because the Dems need to be seen to practice what they preach about women and minorities).
- He'll win in November (though by a narrower margin than predicted/expected - it'll come down to Wisconsin!)
- Ohio will end its trend as the bellwether state, backing Trump over winner Biden.
- More women will come forward with sexual harassment/assault claims against Biden (both during the election and while in office).
- Biden's presidency will be marked by lacklustre, unambitious policy and personal damage control.
- Democrat infighting (especially from the left of the party) will prove more debilitating than Republican opposition; moderate Republican gains at midterms.
- Biden, if he sees out the term, cites age and announces early on (maybe after those uncomfortable but not Obama level catastrophic midterms) that he won't run in 2024.
- VP Harris becomes favorite for 2024 Dem nomination (no guarantee).
- Pence, Cruz, and Second Try Romney (possibly with Nikki Haley in the mix) all set out their stalls early for the 2024 Republican nomination.
- Hmm maybe first female POTUS in 2024.

Seems pretty plausible for the most part. Romney running again is the one thing that definitely won't happen. Cruz might run but I doubt he gets anywhere. Hawley and especially DeSantis are promising candidates besides Haley.

Ron DeSantis seems to be an odd third positionist type, like he’s growing the welfare state in Florida and enacting tougher environmental regulations, which are generally seen as leftist/progressive things

[Mettaton-EX]

so apparently biden wants another disgusting sex pest to help him pick his vp

[Zurkerx]

Biden set to break his silence tomorrow on the allegations reportedly.

Good. Now he has a chance to lay the issue to rest, or cause the dumpster fire to explode. For those not well-informed on the case, here's a WaPo breakdown:

A former Senate staffer for Joe Biden claims that he sexually assaulted her in 1993. Biden’s campaign says this “absolutely did not happen.”

The Washington Post and New York Times spent several weeks this past month carefully looking at Tara Reade’s allegation. Then, new potential evidence emerged over the past few days, and with that, renewed charges from across the political spectrum that the accusations against Biden aren’t being seriously vetted.

Biden to discuss Tara Reade's allegation on Friday, MSNBC says

President Trump’s campaign is seeking to weaponize this case against Democrats’ presumptive nominee. But it’s also a complicated allegation. Let’s break down what we know about it.

The timeline of the alleged assault and the allegation

1993: Former vice president Joe Biden was then a powerful senator, having been in the Senate for 20 years. At the time he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Tara Reade, 29, joins the office in late 1992 in an entry-level staff position. One of her duties was managing interns.

Spring 2019: Biden prepares to run for president, and about half a dozen women share stories of unwanted touching by Biden that they said made them feel uncomfortable. Biden said his intention was to offer affection and comfort as a politician but recognized times had changed and promised to be more respectful. He did not apologize and joked about the criticisms a few days later.

Reade was one of those women, saying that at least three times, Biden put his hands on her shoulders and the base of her neck. She also said she was asked to serve drinks at a reception and overheard a colleague suggest it was because she was pretty and Biden liked her legs. She told The Post she complained to supervisors and was asked to look for another job. In multiple interviews with The Post at the time, she does not mention sexual assault, and she gives varying reasons for her departure from his office at other times.

Early 2020: Voting in the Democratic presidential primary gets underway, and Reade is a vocal supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), though she told The Post that politics didn’t factor into her decision to make the allegation.

March: Biden shores up the Democratic nomination, and Reade gives an interview in a podcast where she makes the sexual assault allegation. She said she was delivering Biden a gym bag somewhere in the Capitol area (which has multiple buildings) but doesn’t remember exactly where. She said Biden pinned her against a wall, reached under her skirt (she said she wasn’t wearing any stockings) and pushed his fingers inside her. From her interview in April:

“He put me up against the wall and took the bag,” she said. “He reached up underneath my skirt … I remember two fingers … It was such a nightmare.”
She said he asked, “Do you want to go somewhere else?” She said that when she pulled away, he said, “Come on, man, I thought you liked me,” then told her that she meant “nothing” before finally grabbing her shoulders and saying, “You’re okay.
Biden, through a campaign spokeswoman, denied this ever happened.

April 12: The Post and the New York Times both publish investigative reports on the same day. Both reports find a friend who anonymously corroborates Reade’s story, but they also find half a dozen to a dozen former staffers at the time who do not recall something like this or any other assault allegation taking place.

April 24: A 1993 clip of a Larry King CNN show surfaces. A woman who called into the show that year identified as from the city where Reade’s mother would have been living at the time said her daughter was having “problems” with “a prominent senator” and wanted suggestions other than going to the press. She did not mention any names nor give details. Reade has since heard the recording and said it was her mom, who died in 2016.

April 27: Business Insider reports that Reade’s neighbor in the mid-1990s said that Reade told her Biden had “put his hand up her skirt and he put his fingers inside her,” which is what Reade accuses Biden of doing. This neighbor was willing to go on the record with her name. “I remember talking about it,” Lynda LaCasse told Business Insider. LaCasse lived next to Reade in California in 1995-1996, where Reade moved after working in Washington. She confirmed her comments in a text message to The Post, saying she is “a very strong Democrat and am supporting Joe Biden during this election."

Reade told The Post that after it happened she told her mother, her brother and a friend but did not mention a neighbor.

Reade went on to work for a California state senator, and Business Insider talked to a former staffer at the time, Lorraine Sanchez, who said Reade told her that a former boss in Washington, D.C., had sexually harassed her and that she had been fired after raising concerns. Sanchez did not recall whether Reade specifically mentioned Biden. Sanchez did not respond to messages from The Post.

What Biden has said

Biden hasn’t spoken about this publicly but plans to Friday morning on MSNBC. His campaign denies it. Here’s the campaign’s statement in full:

“Vice President Biden has dedicated his public life to changing the culture and the laws around violence against women,” said Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager and communications director. “He authored and fought for the passage and reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act. He firmly believes that women have a right to be heard — and heard respectfully. Such claims should also be diligently reviewed by an independent press. What is clear about this claim: It is untrue. This absolutely did not happen.”

Vetting the allegation

Sexual assault allegations are almost always difficult to assess for credibility. Because this allegation takes place decades ago, and because Reade initially came out with a different story about what happened, this one is also complicated.

Last year, Reade said Biden’s touching of her neck and shoulders made her feel uncomfortable. But she did not make any mention of sexual assault, which is far more serious. In fact, she appeared to defend Biden: “This is what I want to emphasize: It’s not him. It’s the people around him who keep covering for him,” she told The Post at the time. She added: “For instance, he should have known what was happening to me … Looking back now, that’s my criticism. Maybe he could have been a little more in touch with his own staff.”

A few people have corroborated parts of Reade’s accounts. Her former neighbor in California went on the record this week confirming Reade’s story, saying she’s sure she heard about it a few years after Reade alleges the assault occurred. Reade told The Post that she told her mother (who died), her brother (who initially told The Post he heard a different story that did not involve sexual assault and days later texted to say he remembered hearing Biden put his hand “under her clothes”), and a friend (who anonymously corroborated hearing her assault story).

Reade said she complained to three supervisors at the time in the Biden office. All three said they don’t remember any complaints from her. One, Biden’s executive assistant at the time, Marianne Baker, put out a statement via the Biden campaign specifically denying Reade’s allegation:

In all my years working for Senator Biden, I never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct, period — not from Ms. Reade, not from anyone. I have absolutely no knowledge or memory of Ms. Reade’s accounting of events, which would have left a searing impression on me as a woman professional, and as a manager.

Reade also says there is a paper trail, but journalists have been unable to locate a central piece of that. She said she filed a complaint with a congressional human resources office about her treatment in Biden’s office — but not about the assault allegation — in 1993. She said she does not have a copy of the complaint, and The Post could find no record of it. The office she likely would have filed a complaint with has since morphed into a different office. It’s possible that corroborating evidence of the complaint could be found at Biden’s archive at the University of Delaware, but the university said these papers will be sealed until two years after Biden retires from public life — unless he were willing to release them.

Reade said she filed a police report this April after talking to The Post and Times about the alleged incident because she was being harassed online about it. CNN obtained that report, which repeats what Reade has said publicly: “Subject-1 disclosed that she was the victim of a sexual assault which was committed by Subject-2 in 1993.” D.C. police said the investigation is inactive. Filing a false police report is a crime.

Reade told The Post she told a therapist earlier this year about what she says happened but would not give The Post the therapist’s notes.

Beyond the paper trail and corroboration, another thing that would bolster the accusation is if there is evidence of a repeated pattern of sexual misconduct by the accused. Extensive investigations by some of the nation’s best journalists have thus far found no found other accusers of Biden but did turn up denials by staffers who worked for him at the time that something like this could happen. By contrast, more than a dozen women have accused Trump of sexual assault or groping, and he is on tape bragging about such behavior.

The thorny politics for Biden and Democrats

Biden is the leading figure of a party that has striven to present itself as the antithesis to Trump, including — perhaps especially — when it comes to Trump’s behavior. As such, Democratic Party leaders have tried to position themselves as having a zero-tolerance policy of sexual misconduct among their leaders. Democratic senators pushed out Democrat Al Franken of Minnesota in 2018 after he faced multiple accusations yet denied them. Later that year, the party made a full-throated stand against Brett M. Kavanaugh to be on the Supreme Court after he was credibly accused of sexual assault when he was in high school.

That included Biden, who told reporters at the time that society should generally presume a woman alleging sexual assault is telling the truth: “For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you've got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she's talking about is real, whether or not she forgets facts, whether or not it's been made worse or better over time,” he said.

There are mixed perspectives in the Democratic Party about how to approach the accusations against Biden, six months before the presidential election. The main question Democrats seem to be struggling with: How do they convey caution about an accusation while also being supportive of a woman’s claim?

Biden is in the process of searching for a vice presidential candidate, whom he’s promised will be a woman, and some of the potential candidates have focused their comments on how they believe women have the right to be heard while in the next breath defending Biden.

Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) said in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle that Reade “has a right to tell her story. And I believe that, and I believe Joe Biden believes that, too.”

“I believe women deserve to be heard, and I believe that has happened here,” Stacey Abrams said in a statement to The Post. “The allegations have been heard and looked into, and for too many women, often, that is not the case.”

“I think this case has been investigated,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who has worked to bring sexual assault cases to light, said on MSNBC, adding: “I know the vice president as a major leader on domestic abuse. I worked with him on that.”

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) has said she was sexually assaulted in college and told NPR this when asked if this allegation concerned her: “Well, I think women should be able to tell their stories. I think that it is important that these allegations are vetted, from the media to beyond."

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), one of the first senators to say Franken needed to go, unequivocally supported Biden to The Post: “Vice President Biden has vehemently denied these allegations, and I support Vice President Biden.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said Thursday on MSNBC she is “satisfied” with how Biden has responded.

Biden has faced growing calls within the party to address the allegation himself, which MSNBC says he will do Friday morning.

What Trump and his campaign are saying

Trump cast doubt on the accusation, saying Thursday it could be a “false accusation.”

But his campaign has hyped it up. His son Donald Trump Jr. has shared Reade’s allegation on social media and given interviews about how he thinks it’s troublesome. He and Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, have accused journalists of not covering the allegation, suggesting they see political value for the president in talking about it.

[Valrifell]

Biden set to break his silence tomorrow on the allegations reportedly.

Good. Now he has a chance to lay the issue to rest, or cause the dumpster fire to explode. For those not well-informed on the case, here's a WaPo breakdown:

A former Senate staffer for Joe Biden claims that he sexually assaulted her in 1993. Biden’s campaign says this “absolutely did not happen.”

The Washington Post and New York Times spent several weeks this past month carefully looking at Tara Reade’s allegation. Then, new potential evidence emerged over the past few days, and with that, renewed charges from across the political spectrum that the accusations against Biden aren’t being seriously vetted.

Biden to discuss Tara Reade's allegation on Friday, MSNBC says

President Trump’s campaign is seeking to weaponize this case against Democrats’ presumptive nominee. But it’s also a complicated allegation. Let’s break down what we know about it.

The timeline of the alleged assault and the allegation

1993: Former vice president Joe Biden was then a powerful senator, having been in the Senate for 20 years. At the time he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Tara Reade, 29, joins the office in late 1992 in an entry-level staff position. One of her duties was managing interns.

Spring 2019: Biden prepares to run for president, and about half a dozen women share stories of unwanted touching by Biden that they said made them feel uncomfortable. Biden said his intention was to offer affection and comfort as a politician but recognized times had changed and promised to be more respectful. He did not apologize and joked about the criticisms a few days later.

Reade was one of those women, saying that at least three times, Biden put his hands on her shoulders and the base of her neck. She also said she was asked to serve drinks at a reception and overheard a colleague suggest it was because she was pretty and Biden liked her legs. She told The Post she complained to supervisors and was asked to look for another job. In multiple interviews with The Post at the time, she does not mention sexual assault, and she gives varying reasons for her departure from his office at other times.

Early 2020: Voting in the Democratic presidential primary gets underway, and Reade is a vocal supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), though she told The Post that politics didn’t factor into her decision to make the allegation.

March: Biden shores up the Democratic nomination, and Reade gives an interview in a podcast where she makes the sexual assault allegation. She said she was delivering Biden a gym bag somewhere in the Capitol area (which has multiple buildings) but doesn’t remember exactly where. She said Biden pinned her against a wall, reached under her skirt (she said she wasn’t wearing any stockings) and pushed his fingers inside her. From her interview in April:

“He put me up against the wall and took the bag,” she said. “He reached up underneath my skirt … I remember two fingers … It was such a nightmare.”
She said he asked, “Do you want to go somewhere else?” She said that when she pulled away, he said, “Come on, man, I thought you liked me,” then told her that she meant “nothing” before finally grabbing her shoulders and saying, “You’re okay.
Biden, through a campaign spokeswoman, denied this ever happened.

April 12: The Post and the New York Times both publish investigative reports on the same day. Both reports find a friend who anonymously corroborates Reade’s story, but they also find half a dozen to a dozen former staffers at the time who do not recall something like this or any other assault allegation taking place.

April 24: A 1993 clip of a Larry King CNN show surfaces. A woman who called into the show that year identified as from the city where Reade’s mother would have been living at the time said her daughter was having “problems” with “a prominent senator” and wanted suggestions other than going to the press. She did not mention any names nor give details. Reade has since heard the recording and said it was her mom, who died in 2016.

April 27: Business Insider reports that Reade’s neighbor in the mid-1990s said that Reade told her Biden had “put his hand up her skirt and he put his fingers inside her,” which is what Reade accuses Biden of doing. This neighbor was willing to go on the record with her name. “I remember talking about it,” Lynda LaCasse told Business Insider. LaCasse lived next to Reade in California in 1995-1996, where Reade moved after working in Washington. She confirmed her comments in a text message to The Post, saying she is “a very strong Democrat and am supporting Joe Biden during this election."

Reade told The Post that after it happened she told her mother, her brother and a friend but did not mention a neighbor.

Reade went on to work for a California state senator, and Business Insider talked to a former staffer at the time, Lorraine Sanchez, who said Reade told her that a former boss in Washington, D.C., had sexually harassed her and that she had been fired after raising concerns. Sanchez did not recall whether Reade specifically mentioned Biden. Sanchez did not respond to messages from The Post.

What Biden has said

Biden hasn’t spoken about this publicly but plans to Friday morning on MSNBC. His campaign denies it. Here’s the campaign’s statement in full:

“Vice President Biden has dedicated his public life to changing the culture and the laws around violence against women,” said Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager and communications director. “He authored and fought for the passage and reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act. He firmly believes that women have a right to be heard — and heard respectfully. Such claims should also be diligently reviewed by an independent press. What is clear about this claim: It is untrue. This absolutely did not happen.”

Vetting the allegation

Sexual assault allegations are almost always difficult to assess for credibility. Because this allegation takes place decades ago, and because Reade initially came out with a different story about what happened, this one is also complicated.

Last year, Reade said Biden’s touching of her neck and shoulders made her feel uncomfortable. But she did not make any mention of sexual assault, which is far more serious. In fact, she appeared to defend Biden: “This is what I want to emphasize: It’s not him. It’s the people around him who keep covering for him,” she told The Post at the time. She added: “For instance, he should have known what was happening to me … Looking back now, that’s my criticism. Maybe he could have been a little more in touch with his own staff.”

A few people have corroborated parts of Reade’s accounts. Her former neighbor in California went on the record this week confirming Reade’s story, saying she’s sure she heard about it a few years after Reade alleges the assault occurred. Reade told The Post that she told her mother (who died), her brother (who initially told The Post he heard a different story that did not involve sexual assault and days later texted to say he remembered hearing Biden put his hand “under her clothes”), and a friend (who anonymously corroborated hearing her assault story).

Reade said she complained to three supervisors at the time in the Biden office. All three said they don’t remember any complaints from her. One, Biden’s executive assistant at the time, Marianne Baker, put out a statement via the Biden campaign specifically denying Reade’s allegation:

In all my years working for Senator Biden, I never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct, period — not from Ms. Reade, not from anyone. I have absolutely no knowledge or memory of Ms. Reade’s accounting of events, which would have left a searing impression on me as a woman professional, and as a manager.

Reade also says there is a paper trail, but journalists have been unable to locate a central piece of that. She said she filed a complaint with a congressional human resources office about her treatment in Biden’s office — but not about the assault allegation — in 1993. She said she does not have a copy of the complaint, and The Post could find no record of it. The office she likely would have filed a complaint with has since morphed into a different office. It’s possible that corroborating evidence of the complaint could be found at Biden’s archive at the University of Delaware, but the university said these papers will be sealed until two years after Biden retires from public life — unless he were willing to release them.

Reade said she filed a police report this April after talking to The Post and Times about the alleged incident because she was being harassed online about it. CNN obtained that report, which repeats what Reade has said publicly: “Subject-1 disclosed that she was the victim of a sexual assault which was committed by Subject-2 in 1993.” D.C. police said the investigation is inactive. Filing a false police report is a crime.

Reade told The Post she told a therapist earlier this year about what she says happened but would not give The Post the therapist’s notes.

Beyond the paper trail and corroboration, another thing that would bolster the accusation is if there is evidence of a repeated pattern of sexual misconduct by the accused. Extensive investigations by some of the nation’s best journalists have thus far found no found other accusers of Biden but did turn up denials by staffers who worked for him at the time that something like this could happen. By contrast, more than a dozen women have accused Trump of sexual assault or groping, and he is on tape bragging about such behavior.

The thorny politics for Biden and Democrats

Biden is the leading figure of a party that has striven to present itself as the antithesis to Trump, including — perhaps especially — when it comes to Trump’s behavior. As such, Democratic Party leaders have tried to position themselves as having a zero-tolerance policy of sexual misconduct among their leaders. Democratic senators pushed out Democrat Al Franken of Minnesota in 2018 after he faced multiple accusations yet denied them. Later that year, the party made a full-throated stand against Brett M. Kavanaugh to be on the Supreme Court after he was credibly accused of sexual assault when he was in high school.

That included Biden, who told reporters at the time that society should generally presume a woman alleging sexual assault is telling the truth: “For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you've got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she's talking about is real, whether or not she forgets facts, whether or not it's been made worse or better over time,” he said.

There are mixed perspectives in the Democratic Party about how to approach the accusations against Biden, six months before the presidential election. The main question Democrats seem to be struggling with: How do they convey caution about an accusation while also being supportive of a woman’s claim?

Biden is in the process of searching for a vice presidential candidate, whom he’s promised will be a woman, and some of the potential candidates have focused their comments on how they believe women have the right to be heard while in the next breath defending Biden.

Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) said in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle that Reade “has a right to tell her story. And I believe that, and I believe Joe Biden believes that, too.”

“I believe women deserve to be heard, and I believe that has happened here,” Stacey Abrams said in a statement to The Post. “The allegations have been heard and looked into, and for too many women, often, that is not the case.”

“I think this case has been investigated,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who has worked to bring sexual assault cases to light, said on MSNBC, adding: “I know the vice president as a major leader on domestic abuse. I worked with him on that.”

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) has said she was sexually assaulted in college and told NPR this when asked if this allegation concerned her: “Well, I think women should be able to tell their stories. I think that it is important that these allegations are vetted, from the media to beyond."

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), one of the first senators to say Franken needed to go, unequivocally supported Biden to The Post: “Vice President Biden has vehemently denied these allegations, and I support Vice President Biden.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said Thursday on MSNBC she is “satisfied” with how Biden has responded.

Biden has faced growing calls within the party to address the allegation himself, which MSNBC says he will do Friday morning.

What Trump and his campaign are saying

Trump cast doubt on the accusation, saying Thursday it could be a “false accusation.”

But his campaign has hyped it up. His son Donald Trump Jr. has shared Reade’s allegation on social media and given interviews about how he thinks it’s troublesome. He and Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, have accused journalists of not covering the allegation, suggesting they see political value for the president in talking about it.

I'll start popping the popcorn now.

[Zurkerx]

Accidentally put this in the MAGAthread... so now posted here.

Re: 2020 election (and beyond):
- Biden will pick Kamala Harris as his VP (because the Dems need to be seen to practice what they preach about women and minorities).
- He'll win in November (though by a narrower margin than predicted/expected - it'll come down to Wisconsin!)
- Ohio will end its trend as the bellwether state, backing Trump over winner Biden.
- More women will come forward with sexual harassment/assault claims against Biden (both during the election and while in office).
- Biden's presidency will be marked by lacklustre, unambitious policy and personal damage control.
- Democrat infighting (especially from the left of the party) will prove more debilitating than Republican opposition; moderate Republican gains at midterms.
- Biden, if he sees out the term, cites age and announces early on (maybe after those uncomfortable but not Obama level catastrophic midterms) that he won't run in 2024.
- VP Harris becomes favorite for 2024 Dem nomination (no guarantee).
- Pence, Cruz, and Second Try Romney (possibly with Nikki Haley in the mix) all set out their stalls early for the 2024 Republican nomination.
- Hmm maybe first female POTUS in 2024.

I'm not sure Biden will pick Harris, especially after she called him out for opposing busing in the debates. I think his campaign will know she will be asked about that if he picks her, and they know that the Republicans can go after her quite a bit for going from attacking him for working with segregationists to being his running mate.

I still think Tammy Baldwin is the best choice (of the conceivable options), and she could help win over more leftist voters, and help him win back Wisconsin, which I also think might be very close. I doubt he will pick her though.

I think he will probably pick Amy Klobuchar, especially if he promised her the position in return for her dropping out and endorsing him right before super Tuesday, or maybe Gretchen Whitmer, because they represent similar political beliefs and because she might be able to help him win back Michigan. Otherwise he might pick Stacey Abrams, but only if he thinks he really needs to double down on winning African-American voters, and if he thinks he has a chance of narrowly winning Georgia.

As for the 2024 Republican primary, I suspect Senator Tom Cotton might attempt to take up Trump's mantle, minus any of Trumps sporadic anti-interventionism and plus a desire for endless war with pretty much everyone other than Israel and Saudi Arabia, so the world might have another deranged American war hawk to look forward to.

Biden better not pick Harris or Abrams if he wants to win: one has too much baggage and the other is inexperience and is pandering for the job. Honestly, Klobuchar would be the smart move and Whitmer is not bad but I would keep my eyes out for Atlanta's Mayor or Val Demings as the surprise pick: despite lacking experience, Atlanta's Mayor was one of the first people to back him and stuck with him and Demings comes from a Swing State and has some experience. Of course, Biden can pick the Progressive route and Baldwin is ideal on paper but apparently she isn't interested.

Here's CNN's supposed top 10 list though it baffles me why Harris is still number one. https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/30/politics ... index.html

[Zurkerx]

Biden set to break his silence tomorrow on the allegations reportedly.

Good. Now he has a chance to lay the issue to rest, or cause the dumpster fire to explode. For those not well-informed on the case, here's a WaPo breakdown:

A former Senate staffer for Joe Biden claims that he sexually assaulted her in 1993. Biden’s campaign says this “absolutely did not happen.”

The Washington Post and New York Times spent several weeks this past month carefully looking at Tara Reade’s allegation. Then, new potential evidence emerged over the past few days, and with that, renewed charges from across the political spectrum that the accusations against Biden aren’t being seriously vetted.

Biden to discuss Tara Reade's allegation on Friday, MSNBC says

President Trump’s campaign is seeking to weaponize this case against Democrats’ presumptive nominee. But it’s also a complicated allegation. Let’s break down what we know about it.

The timeline of the alleged assault and the allegation

1993: Former vice president Joe Biden was then a powerful senator, having been in the Senate for 20 years. At the time he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Tara Reade, 29, joins the office in late 1992 in an entry-level staff position. One of her duties was managing interns.

Spring 2019: Biden prepares to run for president, and about half a dozen women share stories of unwanted touching by Biden that they said made them feel uncomfortable. Biden said his intention was to offer affection and comfort as a politician but recognized times had changed and promised to be more respectful. He did not apologize and joked about the criticisms a few days later.

Reade was one of those women, saying that at least three times, Biden put his hands on her shoulders and the base of her neck. She also said she was asked to serve drinks at a reception and overheard a colleague suggest it was because she was pretty and Biden liked her legs. She told The Post she complained to supervisors and was asked to look for another job. In multiple interviews with The Post at the time, she does not mention sexual assault, and she gives varying reasons for her departure from his office at other times.

Early 2020: Voting in the Democratic presidential primary gets underway, and Reade is a vocal supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), though she told The Post that politics didn’t factor into her decision to make the allegation.

March: Biden shores up the Democratic nomination, and Reade gives an interview in a podcast where she makes the sexual assault allegation. She said she was delivering Biden a gym bag somewhere in the Capitol area (which has multiple buildings) but doesn’t remember exactly where. She said Biden pinned her against a wall, reached under her skirt (she said she wasn’t wearing any stockings) and pushed his fingers inside her. From her interview in April:

“He put me up against the wall and took the bag,” she said. “He reached up underneath my skirt … I remember two fingers … It was such a nightmare.”
She said he asked, “Do you want to go somewhere else?” She said that when she pulled away, he said, “Come on, man, I thought you liked me,” then told her that she meant “nothing” before finally grabbing her shoulders and saying, “You’re okay.
Biden, through a campaign spokeswoman, denied this ever happened.

April 12: The Post and the New York Times both publish investigative reports on the same day. Both reports find a friend who anonymously corroborates Reade’s story, but they also find half a dozen to a dozen former staffers at the time who do not recall something like this or any other assault allegation taking place.

April 24: A 1993 clip of a Larry King CNN show surfaces. A woman who called into the show that year identified as from the city where Reade’s mother would have been living at the time said her daughter was having “problems” with “a prominent senator” and wanted suggestions other than going to the press. She did not mention any names nor give details. Reade has since heard the recording and said it was her mom, who died in 2016.

April 27: Business Insider reports that Reade’s neighbor in the mid-1990s said that Reade told her Biden had “put his hand up her skirt and he put his fingers inside her,” which is what Reade accuses Biden of doing. This neighbor was willing to go on the record with her name. “I remember talking about it,” Lynda LaCasse told Business Insider. LaCasse lived next to Reade in California in 1995-1996, where Reade moved after working in Washington. She confirmed her comments in a text message to The Post, saying she is “a very strong Democrat and am supporting Joe Biden during this election."

Reade told The Post that after it happened she told her mother, her brother and a friend but did not mention a neighbor.

Reade went on to work for a California state senator, and Business Insider talked to a former staffer at the time, Lorraine Sanchez, who said Reade told her that a former boss in Washington, D.C., had sexually harassed her and that she had been fired after raising concerns. Sanchez did not recall whether Reade specifically mentioned Biden. Sanchez did not respond to messages from The Post.

What Biden has said

Biden hasn’t spoken about this publicly but plans to Friday morning on MSNBC. His campaign denies it. Here’s the campaign’s statement in full:

“Vice President Biden has dedicated his public life to changing the culture and the laws around violence against women,” said Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager and communications director. “He authored and fought for the passage and reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act. He firmly believes that women have a right to be heard — and heard respectfully. Such claims should also be diligently reviewed by an independent press. What is clear about this claim: It is untrue. This absolutely did not happen.”

Vetting the allegation

Sexual assault allegations are almost always difficult to assess for credibility. Because this allegation takes place decades ago, and because Reade initially came out with a different story about what happened, this one is also complicated.

Last year, Reade said Biden’s touching of her neck and shoulders made her feel uncomfortable. But she did not make any mention of sexual assault, which is far more serious. In fact, she appeared to defend Biden: “This is what I want to emphasize: It’s not him. It’s the people around him who keep covering for him,” she told The Post at the time. She added: “For instance, he should have known what was happening to me … Looking back now, that’s my criticism. Maybe he could have been a little more in touch with his own staff.”

A few people have corroborated parts of Reade’s accounts. Her former neighbor in California went on the record this week confirming Reade’s story, saying she’s sure she heard about it a few years after Reade alleges the assault occurred. Reade told The Post that she told her mother (who died), her brother (who initially told The Post he heard a different story that did not involve sexual assault and days later texted to say he remembered hearing Biden put his hand “under her clothes”), and a friend (who anonymously corroborated hearing her assault story).

Reade said she complained to three supervisors at the time in the Biden office. All three said they don’t remember any complaints from her. One, Biden’s executive assistant at the time, Marianne Baker, put out a statement via the Biden campaign specifically denying Reade’s allegation:

In all my years working for Senator Biden, I never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct, period — not from Ms. Reade, not from anyone. I have absolutely no knowledge or memory of Ms. Reade’s accounting of events, which would have left a searing impression on me as a woman professional, and as a manager.

Reade also says there is a paper trail, but journalists have been unable to locate a central piece of that. She said she filed a complaint with a congressional human resources office about her treatment in Biden’s office — but not about the assault allegation — in 1993. She said she does not have a copy of the complaint, and The Post could find no record of it. The office she likely would have filed a complaint with has since morphed into a different office. It’s possible that corroborating evidence of the complaint could be found at Biden’s archive at the University of Delaware, but the university said these papers will be sealed until two years after Biden retires from public life — unless he were willing to release them.

Reade said she filed a police report this April after talking to The Post and Times about the alleged incident because she was being harassed online about it. CNN obtained that report, which repeats what Reade has said publicly: “Subject-1 disclosed that she was the victim of a sexual assault which was committed by Subject-2 in 1993.” D.C. police said the investigation is inactive. Filing a false police report is a crime.

Reade told The Post she told a therapist earlier this year about what she says happened but would not give The Post the therapist’s notes.

Beyond the paper trail and corroboration, another thing that would bolster the accusation is if there is evidence of a repeated pattern of sexual misconduct by the accused. Extensive investigations by some of the nation’s best journalists have thus far found no found other accusers of Biden but did turn up denials by staffers who worked for him at the time that something like this could happen. By contrast, more than a dozen women have accused Trump of sexual assault or groping, and he is on tape bragging about such behavior.

The thorny politics for Biden and Democrats

Biden is the leading figure of a party that has striven to present itself as the antithesis to Trump, including — perhaps especially — when it comes to Trump’s behavior. As such, Democratic Party leaders have tried to position themselves as having a zero-tolerance policy of sexual misconduct among their leaders. Democratic senators pushed out Democrat Al Franken of Minnesota in 2018 after he faced multiple accusations yet denied them. Later that year, the party made a full-throated stand against Brett M. Kavanaugh to be on the Supreme Court after he was credibly accused of sexual assault when he was in high school.

That included Biden, who told reporters at the time that society should generally presume a woman alleging sexual assault is telling the truth: “For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you've got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she's talking about is real, whether or not she forgets facts, whether or not it's been made worse or better over time,” he said.

There are mixed perspectives in the Democratic Party about how to approach the accusations against Biden, six months before the presidential election. The main question Democrats seem to be struggling with: How do they convey caution about an accusation while also being supportive of a woman’s claim?

Biden is in the process of searching for a vice presidential candidate, whom he’s promised will be a woman, and some of the potential candidates have focused their comments on how they believe women have the right to be heard while in the next breath defending Biden.

Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) said in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle that Reade “has a right to tell her story. And I believe that, and I believe Joe Biden believes that, too.”

“I believe women deserve to be heard, and I believe that has happened here,” Stacey Abrams said in a statement to The Post. “The allegations have been heard and looked into, and for too many women, often, that is not the case.”

“I think this case has been investigated,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who has worked to bring sexual assault cases to light, said on MSNBC, adding: “I know the vice president as a major leader on domestic abuse. I worked with him on that.”

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) has said she was sexually assaulted in college and told NPR this when asked if this allegation concerned her: “Well, I think women should be able to tell their stories. I think that it is important that these allegations are vetted, from the media to beyond."

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), one of the first senators to say Franken needed to go, unequivocally supported Biden to The Post: “Vice President Biden has vehemently denied these allegations, and I support Vice President Biden.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said Thursday on MSNBC she is “satisfied” with how Biden has responded.

Biden has faced growing calls within the party to address the allegation himself, which MSNBC says he will do Friday morning.

What Trump and his campaign are saying

Trump cast doubt on the accusation, saying Thursday it could be a “false accusation.”

But his campaign has hyped it up. His son Donald Trump Jr. has shared Reade’s allegation on social media and given interviews about how he thinks it’s troublesome. He and Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, have accused journalists of not covering the allegation, suggesting they see political value for the president in talking about it.

I'll start popping the popcorn now.

Excellent. Make sure though to get the extra buttery kind: that's the best kind out there

[Pythaga]

Biden set to break his silence tomorrow on the allegations reportedly.

Good. Now he has a chance to lay the issue to rest, or cause the dumpster fire to explode. For those not well-informed on the case, here's a WaPo breakdown:

A former Senate staffer for Joe Biden claims that he sexually assaulted her in 1993. Biden’s campaign says this “absolutely did not happen.”

The Washington Post and New York Times spent several weeks this past month carefully looking at Tara Reade’s allegation. Then, new potential evidence emerged over the past few days, and with that, renewed charges from across the political spectrum that the accusations against Biden aren’t being seriously vetted.

Biden to discuss Tara Reade's allegation on Friday, MSNBC says

President Trump’s campaign is seeking to weaponize this case against Democrats’ presumptive nominee. But it’s also a complicated allegation. Let’s break down what we know about it.

The timeline of the alleged assault and the allegation

1993: Former vice president Joe Biden was then a powerful senator, having been in the Senate for 20 years. At the time he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Tara Reade, 29, joins the office in late 1992 in an entry-level staff position. One of her duties was managing interns.

Spring 2019: Biden prepares to run for president, and about half a dozen women share stories of unwanted touching by Biden that they said made them feel uncomfortable. Biden said his intention was to offer affection and comfort as a politician but recognized times had changed and promised to be more respectful. He did not apologize and joked about the criticisms a few days later.

Reade was one of those women, saying that at least three times, Biden put his hands on her shoulders and the base of her neck. She also said she was asked to serve drinks at a reception and overheard a colleague suggest it was because she was pretty and Biden liked her legs. She told The Post she complained to supervisors and was asked to look for another job. In multiple interviews with The Post at the time, she does not mention sexual assault, and she gives varying reasons for her departure from his office at other times.

Early 2020: Voting in the Democratic presidential primary gets underway, and Reade is a vocal supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), though she told The Post that politics didn’t factor into her decision to make the allegation.

March: Biden shores up the Democratic nomination, and Reade gives an interview in a podcast where she makes the sexual assault allegation. She said she was delivering Biden a gym bag somewhere in the Capitol area (which has multiple buildings) but doesn’t remember exactly where. She said Biden pinned her against a wall, reached under her skirt (she said she wasn’t wearing any stockings) and pushed his fingers inside her. From her interview in April:

“He put me up against the wall and took the bag,” she said. “He reached up underneath my skirt … I remember two fingers … It was such a nightmare.”
She said he asked, “Do you want to go somewhere else?” She said that when she pulled away, he said, “Come on, man, I thought you liked me,” then told her that she meant “nothing” before finally grabbing her shoulders and saying, “You’re okay.
Biden, through a campaign spokeswoman, denied this ever happened.

April 12: The Post and the New York Times both publish investigative reports on the same day. Both reports find a friend who anonymously corroborates Reade’s story, but they also find half a dozen to a dozen former staffers at the time who do not recall something like this or any other assault allegation taking place.

April 24: A 1993 clip of a Larry King CNN show surfaces. A woman who called into the show that year identified as from the city where Reade’s mother would have been living at the time said her daughter was having “problems” with “a prominent senator” and wanted suggestions other than going to the press. She did not mention any names nor give details. Reade has since heard the recording and said it was her mom, who died in 2016.

April 27: Business Insider reports that Reade’s neighbor in the mid-1990s said that Reade told her Biden had “put his hand up her skirt and he put his fingers inside her,” which is what Reade accuses Biden of doing. This neighbor was willing to go on the record with her name. “I remember talking about it,” Lynda LaCasse told Business Insider. LaCasse lived next to Reade in California in 1995-1996, where Reade moved after working in Washington. She confirmed her comments in a text message to The Post, saying she is “a very strong Democrat and am supporting Joe Biden during this election."

Reade told The Post that after it happened she told her mother, her brother and a friend but did not mention a neighbor.

Reade went on to work for a California state senator, and Business Insider talked to a former staffer at the time, Lorraine Sanchez, who said Reade told her that a former boss in Washington, D.C., had sexually harassed her and that she had been fired after raising concerns. Sanchez did not recall whether Reade specifically mentioned Biden. Sanchez did not respond to messages from The Post.

What Biden has said

Biden hasn’t spoken about this publicly but plans to Friday morning on MSNBC. His campaign denies it. Here’s the campaign’s statement in full:

“Vice President Biden has dedicated his public life to changing the culture and the laws around violence against women,” said Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager and communications director. “He authored and fought for the passage and reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act. He firmly believes that women have a right to be heard — and heard respectfully. Such claims should also be diligently reviewed by an independent press. What is clear about this claim: It is untrue. This absolutely did not happen.”

Vetting the allegation

Sexual assault allegations are almost always difficult to assess for credibility. Because this allegation takes place decades ago, and because Reade initially came out with a different story about what happened, this one is also complicated.

Last year, Reade said Biden’s touching of her neck and shoulders made her feel uncomfortable. But she did not make any mention of sexual assault, which is far more serious. In fact, she appeared to defend Biden: “This is what I want to emphasize: It’s not him. It’s the people around him who keep covering for him,” she told The Post at the time. She added: “For instance, he should have known what was happening to me … Looking back now, that’s my criticism. Maybe he could have been a little more in touch with his own staff.”

A few people have corroborated parts of Reade’s accounts. Her former neighbor in California went on the record this week confirming Reade’s story, saying she’s sure she heard about it a few years after Reade alleges the assault occurred. Reade told The Post that she told her mother (who died), her brother (who initially told The Post he heard a different story that did not involve sexual assault and days later texted to say he remembered hearing Biden put his hand “under her clothes”), and a friend (who anonymously corroborated hearing her assault story).

Reade said she complained to three supervisors at the time in the Biden office. All three said they don’t remember any complaints from her. One, Biden’s executive assistant at the time, Marianne Baker, put out a statement via the Biden campaign specifically denying Reade’s allegation:

In all my years working for Senator Biden, I never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct, period — not from Ms. Reade, not from anyone. I have absolutely no knowledge or memory of Ms. Reade’s accounting of events, which would have left a searing impression on me as a woman professional, and as a manager.

Reade also says there is a paper trail, but journalists have been unable to locate a central piece of that. She said she filed a complaint with a congressional human resources office about her treatment in Biden’s office — but not about the assault allegation — in 1993. She said she does not have a copy of the complaint, and The Post could find no record of it. The office she likely would have filed a complaint with has since morphed into a different office. It’s possible that corroborating evidence of the complaint could be found at Biden’s archive at the University of Delaware, but the university said these papers will be sealed until two years after Biden retires from public life — unless he were willing to release them.

Reade said she filed a police report this April after talking to The Post and Times about the alleged incident because she was being harassed online about it. CNN obtained that report, which repeats what Reade has said publicly: “Subject-1 disclosed that she was the victim of a sexual assault which was committed by Subject-2 in 1993.” D.C. police said the investigation is inactive. Filing a false police report is a crime.

Reade told The Post she told a therapist earlier this year about what she says happened but would not give The Post the therapist’s notes.

Beyond the paper trail and corroboration, another thing that would bolster the accusation is if there is evidence of a repeated pattern of sexual misconduct by the accused. Extensive investigations by some of the nation’s best journalists have thus far found no found other accusers of Biden but did turn up denials by staffers who worked for him at the time that something like this could happen. By contrast, more than a dozen women have accused Trump of sexual assault or groping, and he is on tape bragging about such behavior.

The thorny politics for Biden and Democrats

Biden is the leading figure of a party that has striven to present itself as the antithesis to Trump, including — perhaps especially — when it comes to Trump’s behavior. As such, Democratic Party leaders have tried to position themselves as having a zero-tolerance policy of sexual misconduct among their leaders. Democratic senators pushed out Democrat Al Franken of Minnesota in 2018 after he faced multiple accusations yet denied them. Later that year, the party made a full-throated stand against Brett M. Kavanaugh to be on the Supreme Court after he was credibly accused of sexual assault when he was in high school.

That included Biden, who told reporters at the time that society should generally presume a woman alleging sexual assault is telling the truth: “For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you've got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she's talking about is real, whether or not she forgets facts, whether or not it's been made worse or better over time,” he said.

There are mixed perspectives in the Democratic Party about how to approach the accusations against Biden, six months before the presidential election. The main question Democrats seem to be struggling with: How do they convey caution about an accusation while also being supportive of a woman’s claim?

Biden is in the process of searching for a vice presidential candidate, whom he’s promised will be a woman, and some of the potential candidates have focused their comments on how they believe women have the right to be heard while in the next breath defending Biden.

Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) said in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle that Reade “has a right to tell her story. And I believe that, and I believe Joe Biden believes that, too.”

“I believe women deserve to be heard, and I believe that has happened here,” Stacey Abrams said in a statement to The Post. “The allegations have been heard and looked into, and for too many women, often, that is not the case.”

“I think this case has been investigated,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who has worked to bring sexual assault cases to light, said on MSNBC, adding: “I know the vice president as a major leader on domestic abuse. I worked with him on that.”

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) has said she was sexually assaulted in college and told NPR this when asked if this allegation concerned her: “Well, I think women should be able to tell their stories. I think that it is important that these allegations are vetted, from the media to beyond."

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), one of the first senators to say Franken needed to go, unequivocally supported Biden to The Post: “Vice President Biden has vehemently denied these allegations, and I support Vice President Biden.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said Thursday on MSNBC she is “satisfied” with how Biden has responded.

Biden has faced growing calls within the party to address the allegation himself, which MSNBC says he will do Friday morning.

What Trump and his campaign are saying

Trump cast doubt on the accusation, saying Thursday it could be a “false accusation.”

But his campaign has hyped it up. His son Donald Trump Jr. has shared Reade’s allegation on social media and given interviews about how he thinks it’s troublesome. He and Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, have accused journalists of not covering the allegation, suggesting they see political value for the president in talking about it.

It’ll be interesting to see what he says about this one. If he outright denies it he could loose the hardcore #metoo people who say “believe women no matter what.” There’s absolutely no way he would outright admit to it. I have a feeling that very little, if any, of his “response” will be in response to this. He’ll probably just talk about how much he respects women, and his voting record on women’s rights bills.

[Outer Sparta]

I'm not sure Biden will pick Harris, especially after she called him out for opposing busing in the debates. I think his campaign will know she will be asked about that if he picks her, and they know that the Republicans can go after her quite a bit for going from attacking him for working with segregationists to being his running mate.

I still think Tammy Baldwin is the best choice (of the conceivable options), and she could help win over more leftist voters, and help him win back Wisconsin, which I also think might be very close. I doubt he will pick her though.

I think he will probably pick Amy Klobuchar, especially if he promised her the position in return for her dropping out and endorsing him right before super Tuesday, or maybe Gretchen Whitmer, because they represent similar political beliefs and because she might be able to help him win back Michigan. Otherwise he might pick Stacey Abrams, but only if he thinks he really needs to double down on winning African-American voters, and if he thinks he has a chance of narrowly winning Georgia.

As for the 2024 Republican primary, I suspect Senator Tom Cotton might attempt to take up Trump's mantle, minus any of Trumps sporadic anti-interventionism and plus a desire for endless war with pretty much everyone other than Israel and Saudi Arabia, so the world might have another deranged American war hawk to look forward to.

Biden better not pick Harris or Abrams if he wants to win: one has too much baggage and the other is inexperience and is pandering for the job. Honestly, Klobuchar would be the smart move and Whitmer is not bad but I would keep my eyes out for Atlanta's Mayor or Val Demings as the surprise pick: despite lacking experience, Atlanta's Mayor was one of the first people to back him and stuck with him and Demings comes from a Swing State and has some experience. Of course, Biden can pick the Progressive route and Baldwin is ideal on paper but apparently she isn't interested.

Here's CNN's supposed top 10 list though it baffles me why Harris is still number one. https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/30/politics ... index.html

I do like the Warren or Pressley route for him.

[Uiiop]

Biden set to break his silence tomorrow on the allegations reportedly.

Good. Now he has a chance to lay the issue to rest, or cause the dumpster fire to explode. For those not well-informed on the case, here's a WaPo breakdown:

A former Senate staffer for Joe Biden claims that he sexually assaulted her in 1993. Biden’s campaign says this “absolutely did not happen.”

The Washington Post and New York Times spent several weeks this past month carefully looking at Tara Reade’s allegation. Then, new potential evidence emerged over the past few days, and with that, renewed charges from across the political spectrum that the accusations against Biden aren’t being seriously vetted.

Biden to discuss Tara Reade's allegation on Friday, MSNBC says

President Trump’s campaign is seeking to weaponize this case against Democrats’ presumptive nominee. But it’s also a complicated allegation. Let’s break down what we know about it.

The timeline of the alleged assault and the allegation

1993: Former vice president Joe Biden was then a powerful senator, having been in the Senate for 20 years. At the time he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Tara Reade, 29, joins the office in late 1992 in an entry-level staff position. One of her duties was managing interns.

Spring 2019: Biden prepares to run for president, and about half a dozen women share stories of unwanted touching by Biden that they said made them feel uncomfortable. Biden said his intention was to offer affection and comfort as a politician but recognized times had changed and promised to be more respectful. He did not apologize and joked about the criticisms a few days later.

Reade was one of those women, saying that at least three times, Biden put his hands on her shoulders and the base of her neck. She also said she was asked to serve drinks at a reception and overheard a colleague suggest it was because she was pretty and Biden liked her legs. She told The Post she complained to supervisors and was asked to look for another job. In multiple interviews with The Post at the time, she does not mention sexual assault, and she gives varying reasons for her departure from his office at other times.

Early 2020: Voting in the Democratic presidential primary gets underway, and Reade is a vocal supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), though she told The Post that politics didn’t factor into her decision to make the allegation.

March: Biden shores up the Democratic nomination, and Reade gives an interview in a podcast where she makes the sexual assault allegation. She said she was delivering Biden a gym bag somewhere in the Capitol area (which has multiple buildings) but doesn’t remember exactly where. She said Biden pinned her against a wall, reached under her skirt (she said she wasn’t wearing any stockings) and pushed his fingers inside her. From her interview in April:

“He put me up against the wall and took the bag,” she said. “He reached up underneath my skirt … I remember two fingers … It was such a nightmare.”
She said he asked, “Do you want to go somewhere else?” She said that when she pulled away, he said, “Come on, man, I thought you liked me,” then told her that she meant “nothing” before finally grabbing her shoulders and saying, “You’re okay.
Biden, through a campaign spokeswoman, denied this ever happened.

April 12: The Post and the New York Times both publish investigative reports on the same day. Both reports find a friend who anonymously corroborates Reade’s story, but they also find half a dozen to a dozen former staffers at the time who do not recall something like this or any other assault allegation taking place.

April 24: A 1993 clip of a Larry King CNN show surfaces. A woman who called into the show that year identified as from the city where Reade’s mother would have been living at the time said her daughter was having “problems” with “a prominent senator” and wanted suggestions other than going to the press. She did not mention any names nor give details. Reade has since heard the recording and said it was her mom, who died in 2016.

April 27: Business Insider reports that Reade’s neighbor in the mid-1990s said that Reade told her Biden had “put his hand up her skirt and he put his fingers inside her,” which is what Reade accuses Biden of doing. This neighbor was willing to go on the record with her name. “I remember talking about it,” Lynda LaCasse told Business Insider. LaCasse lived next to Reade in California in 1995-1996, where Reade moved after working in Washington. She confirmed her comments in a text message to The Post, saying she is “a very strong Democrat and am supporting Joe Biden during this election."

Reade told The Post that after it happened she told her mother, her brother and a friend but did not mention a neighbor.

Reade went on to work for a California state senator, and Business Insider talked to a former staffer at the time, Lorraine Sanchez, who said Reade told her that a former boss in Washington, D.C., had sexually harassed her and that she had been fired after raising concerns. Sanchez did not recall whether Reade specifically mentioned Biden. Sanchez did not respond to messages from The Post.

What Biden has said

Biden hasn’t spoken about this publicly but plans to Friday morning on MSNBC. His campaign denies it. Here’s the campaign’s statement in full:

“Vice President Biden has dedicated his public life to changing the culture and the laws around violence against women,” said Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager and communications director. “He authored and fought for the passage and reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act. He firmly believes that women have a right to be heard — and heard respectfully. Such claims should also be diligently reviewed by an independent press. What is clear about this claim: It is untrue. This absolutely did not happen.”

Vetting the allegation

Sexual assault allegations are almost always difficult to assess for credibility. Because this allegation takes place decades ago, and because Reade initially came out with a different story about what happened, this one is also complicated.

Last year, Reade said Biden’s touching of her neck and shoulders made her feel uncomfortable. But she did not make any mention of sexual assault, which is far more serious. In fact, she appeared to defend Biden: “This is what I want to emphasize: It’s not him. It’s the people around him who keep covering for him,” she told The Post at the time. She added: “For instance, he should have known what was happening to me … Looking back now, that’s my criticism. Maybe he could have been a little more in touch with his own staff.”

A few people have corroborated parts of Reade’s accounts. Her former neighbor in California went on the record this week confirming Reade’s story, saying she’s sure she heard about it a few years after Reade alleges the assault occurred. Reade told The Post that she told her mother (who died), her brother (who initially told The Post he heard a different story that did not involve sexual assault and days later texted to say he remembered hearing Biden put his hand “under her clothes”), and a friend (who anonymously corroborated hearing her assault story).

Reade said she complained to three supervisors at the time in the Biden office. All three said they don’t remember any complaints from her. One, Biden’s executive assistant at the time, Marianne Baker, put out a statement via the Biden campaign specifically denying Reade’s allegation:

In all my years working for Senator Biden, I never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct, period — not from Ms. Reade, not from anyone. I have absolutely no knowledge or memory of Ms. Reade’s accounting of events, which would have left a searing impression on me as a woman professional, and as a manager.

Reade also says there is a paper trail, but journalists have been unable to locate a central piece of that. She said she filed a complaint with a congressional human resources office about her treatment in Biden’s office — but not about the assault allegation — in 1993. She said she does not have a copy of the complaint, and The Post could find no record of it. The office she likely would have filed a complaint with has since morphed into a different office. It’s possible that corroborating evidence of the complaint could be found at Biden’s archive at the University of Delaware, but the university said these papers will be sealed until two years after Biden retires from public life — unless he were willing to release them.

Reade said she filed a police report this April after talking to The Post and Times about the alleged incident because she was being harassed online about it. CNN obtained that report, which repeats what Reade has said publicly: “Subject-1 disclosed that she was the victim of a sexual assault which was committed by Subject-2 in 1993.” D.C. police said the investigation is inactive. Filing a false police report is a crime.

Reade told The Post she told a therapist earlier this year about what she says happened but would not give The Post the therapist’s notes.

Beyond the paper trail and corroboration, another thing that would bolster the accusation is if there is evidence of a repeated pattern of sexual misconduct by the accused. Extensive investigations by some of the nation’s best journalists have thus far found no found other accusers of Biden but did turn up denials by staffers who worked for him at the time that something like this could happen. By contrast, more than a dozen women have accused Trump of sexual assault or groping, and he is on tape bragging about such behavior.

The thorny politics for Biden and Democrats

Biden is the leading figure of a party that has striven to present itself as the antithesis to Trump, including — perhaps especially — when it comes to Trump’s behavior. As such, Democratic Party leaders have tried to position themselves as having a zero-tolerance policy of sexual misconduct among their leaders. Democratic senators pushed out Democrat Al Franken of Minnesota in 2018 after he faced multiple accusations yet denied them. Later that year, the party made a full-throated stand against Brett M. Kavanaugh to be on the Supreme Court after he was credibly accused of sexual assault when he was in high school.

That included Biden, who told reporters at the time that society should generally presume a woman alleging sexual assault is telling the truth: “For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you've got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she's talking about is real, whether or not she forgets facts, whether or not it's been made worse or better over time,” he said.

There are mixed perspectives in the Democratic Party about how to approach the accusations against Biden, six months before the presidential election. The main question Democrats seem to be struggling with: How do they convey caution about an accusation while also being supportive of a woman’s claim?

Biden is in the process of searching for a vice presidential candidate, whom he’s promised will be a woman, and some of the potential candidates have focused their comments on how they believe women have the right to be heard while in the next breath defending Biden.

Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) said in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle that Reade “has a right to tell her story. And I believe that, and I believe Joe Biden believes that, too.”

“I believe women deserve to be heard, and I believe that has happened here,” Stacey Abrams said in a statement to The Post. “The allegations have been heard and looked into, and for too many women, often, that is not the case.”

“I think this case has been investigated,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who has worked to bring sexual assault cases to light, said on MSNBC, adding: “I know the vice president as a major leader on domestic abuse. I worked with him on that.”

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) has said she was sexually assaulted in college and told NPR this when asked if this allegation concerned her: “Well, I think women should be able to tell their stories. I think that it is important that these allegations are vetted, from the media to beyond."

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), one of the first senators to say Franken needed to go, unequivocally supported Biden to The Post: “Vice President Biden has vehemently denied these allegations, and I support Vice President Biden.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said Thursday on MSNBC she is “satisfied” with how Biden has responded.

Biden has faced growing calls within the party to address the allegation himself, which MSNBC says he will do Friday morning.

What Trump and his campaign are saying

Trump cast doubt on the accusation, saying Thursday it could be a “false accusation.”

But his campaign has hyped it up. His son Donald Trump Jr. has shared Reade’s allegation on social media and given interviews about how he thinks it’s troublesome. He and Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, have accused journalists of not covering the allegation, suggesting they see political value for the president in talking about it.

https://t.co/S4nviJikUs?amp=1

Tara apparently is going to go on the day after.
I don't know what's going to happen but the media is betting on biden not setting this.

[Outer Sparta]

Biden set to break his silence tomorrow on the allegations reportedly.

Good. Now he has a chance to lay the issue to rest, or cause the dumpster fire to explode. For those not well-informed on the case, here's a WaPo breakdown:

A former Senate staffer for Joe Biden claims that he sexually assaulted her in 1993. Biden’s campaign says this “absolutely did not happen.”

The Washington Post and New York Times spent several weeks this past month carefully looking at Tara Reade’s allegation. Then, new potential evidence emerged over the past few days, and with that, renewed charges from across the political spectrum that the accusations against Biden aren’t being seriously vetted.

Biden to discuss Tara Reade's allegation on Friday, MSNBC says

President Trump’s campaign is seeking to weaponize this case against Democrats’ presumptive nominee. But it’s also a complicated allegation. Let’s break down what we know about it.

The timeline of the alleged assault and the allegation

1993: Former vice president Joe Biden was then a powerful senator, having been in the Senate for 20 years. At the time he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Tara Reade, 29, joins the office in late 1992 in an entry-level staff position. One of her duties was managing interns.

Spring 2019: Biden prepares to run for president, and about half a dozen women share stories of unwanted touching by Biden that they said made them feel uncomfortable. Biden said his intention was to offer affection and comfort as a politician but recognized times had changed and promised to be more respectful. He did not apologize and joked about the criticisms a few days later.

Reade was one of those women, saying that at least three times, Biden put his hands on her shoulders and the base of her neck. She also said she was asked to serve drinks at a reception and overheard a colleague suggest it was because she was pretty and Biden liked her legs. She told The Post she complained to supervisors and was asked to look for another job. In multiple interviews with The Post at the time, she does not mention sexual assault, and she gives varying reasons for her departure from his office at other times.

Early 2020: Voting in the Democratic presidential primary gets underway, and Reade is a vocal supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), though she told The Post that politics didn’t factor into her decision to make the allegation.

March: Biden shores up the Democratic nomination, and Reade gives an interview in a podcast where she makes the sexual assault allegation. She said she was delivering Biden a gym bag somewhere in the Capitol area (which has multiple buildings) but doesn’t remember exactly where. She said Biden pinned her against a wall, reached under her skirt (she said she wasn’t wearing any stockings) and pushed his fingers inside her. From her interview in April:

“He put me up against the wall and took the bag,” she said. “He reached up underneath my skirt … I remember two fingers … It was such a nightmare.”
She said he asked, “Do you want to go somewhere else?” She said that when she pulled away, he said, “Come on, man, I thought you liked me,” then told her that she meant “nothing” before finally grabbing her shoulders and saying, “You’re okay.
Biden, through a campaign spokeswoman, denied this ever happened.

April 12: The Post and the New York Times both publish investigative reports on the same day. Both reports find a friend who anonymously corroborates Reade’s story, but they also find half a dozen to a dozen former staffers at the time who do not recall something like this or any other assault allegation taking place.

April 24: A 1993 clip of a Larry King CNN show surfaces. A woman who called into the show that year identified as from the city where Reade’s mother would have been living at the time said her daughter was having “problems” with “a prominent senator” and wanted suggestions other than going to the press. She did not mention any names nor give details. Reade has since heard the recording and said it was her mom, who died in 2016.

April 27: Business Insider reports that Reade’s neighbor in the mid-1990s said that Reade told her Biden had “put his hand up her skirt and he put his fingers inside her,” which is what Reade accuses Biden of doing. This neighbor was willing to go on the record with her name. “I remember talking about it,” Lynda LaCasse told Business Insider. LaCasse lived next to Reade in California in 1995-1996, where Reade moved after working in Washington. She confirmed her comments in a text message to The Post, saying she is “a very strong Democrat and am supporting Joe Biden during this election."

Reade told The Post that after it happened she told her mother, her brother and a friend but did not mention a neighbor.

Reade went on to work for a California state senator, and Business Insider talked to a former staffer at the time, Lorraine Sanchez, who said Reade told her that a former boss in Washington, D.C., had sexually harassed her and that she had been fired after raising concerns. Sanchez did not recall whether Reade specifically mentioned Biden. Sanchez did not respond to messages from The Post.

What Biden has said

Biden hasn’t spoken about this publicly but plans to Friday morning on MSNBC. His campaign denies it. Here’s the campaign’s statement in full:

“Vice President Biden has dedicated his public life to changing the culture and the laws around violence against women,” said Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager and communications director. “He authored and fought for the passage and reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act. He firmly believes that women have a right to be heard — and heard respectfully. Such claims should also be diligently reviewed by an independent press. What is clear about this claim: It is untrue. This absolutely did not happen.”

Vetting the allegation

Sexual assault allegations are almost always difficult to assess for credibility. Because this allegation takes place decades ago, and because Reade initially came out with a different story about what happened, this one is also complicated.

Last year, Reade said Biden’s touching of her neck and shoulders made her feel uncomfortable. But she did not make any mention of sexual assault, which is far more serious. In fact, she appeared to defend Biden: “This is what I want to emphasize: It’s not him. It’s the people around him who keep covering for him,” she told The Post at the time. She added: “For instance, he should have known what was happening to me … Looking back now, that’s my criticism. Maybe he could have been a little more in touch with his own staff.”

A few people have corroborated parts of Reade’s accounts. Her former neighbor in California went on the record this week confirming Reade’s story, saying she’s sure she heard about it a few years after Reade alleges the assault occurred. Reade told The Post that she told her mother (who died), her brother (who initially told The Post he heard a different story that did not involve sexual assault and days later texted to say he remembered hearing Biden put his hand “under her clothes”), and a friend (who anonymously corroborated hearing her assault story).

Reade said she complained to three supervisors at the time in the Biden office. All three said they don’t remember any complaints from her. One, Biden’s executive assistant at the time, Marianne Baker, put out a statement via the Biden campaign specifically denying Reade’s allegation:

In all my years working for Senator Biden, I never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct, period — not from Ms. Reade, not from anyone. I have absolutely no knowledge or memory of Ms. Reade’s accounting of events, which would have left a searing impression on me as a woman professional, and as a manager.

Reade also says there is a paper trail, but journalists have been unable to locate a central piece of that. She said she filed a complaint with a congressional human resources office about her treatment in Biden’s office — but not about the assault allegation — in 1993. She said she does not have a copy of the complaint, and The Post could find no record of it. The office she likely would have filed a complaint with has since morphed into a different office. It’s possible that corroborating evidence of the complaint could be found at Biden’s archive at the University of Delaware, but the university said these papers will be sealed until two years after Biden retires from public life — unless he were willing to release them.

Reade said she filed a police report this April after talking to The Post and Times about the alleged incident because she was being harassed online about it. CNN obtained that report, which repeats what Reade has said publicly: “Subject-1 disclosed that she was the victim of a sexual assault which was committed by Subject-2 in 1993.” D.C. police said the investigation is inactive. Filing a false police report is a crime.

Reade told The Post she told a therapist earlier this year about what she says happened but would not give The Post the therapist’s notes.

Beyond the paper trail and corroboration, another thing that would bolster the accusation is if there is evidence of a repeated pattern of sexual misconduct by the accused. Extensive investigations by some of the nation’s best journalists have thus far found no found other accusers of Biden but did turn up denials by staffers who worked for him at the time that something like this could happen. By contrast, more than a dozen women have accused Trump of sexual assault or groping, and he is on tape bragging about such behavior.

The thorny politics for Biden and Democrats

Biden is the leading figure of a party that has striven to present itself as the antithesis to Trump, including — perhaps especially — when it comes to Trump’s behavior. As such, Democratic Party leaders have tried to position themselves as having a zero-tolerance policy of sexual misconduct among their leaders. Democratic senators pushed out Democrat Al Franken of Minnesota in 2018 after he faced multiple accusations yet denied them. Later that year, the party made a full-throated stand against Brett M. Kavanaugh to be on the Supreme Court after he was credibly accused of sexual assault when he was in high school.

That included Biden, who told reporters at the time that society should generally presume a woman alleging sexual assault is telling the truth: “For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you've got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she's talking about is real, whether or not she forgets facts, whether or not it's been made worse or better over time,” he said.

There are mixed perspectives in the Democratic Party about how to approach the accusations against Biden, six months before the presidential election. The main question Democrats seem to be struggling with: How do they convey caution about an accusation while also being supportive of a woman’s claim?

Biden is in the process of searching for a vice presidential candidate, whom he’s promised will be a woman, and some of the potential candidates have focused their comments on how they believe women have the right to be heard while in the next breath defending Biden.

Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) said in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle that Reade “has a right to tell her story. And I believe that, and I believe Joe Biden believes that, too.”

“I believe women deserve to be heard, and I believe that has happened here,” Stacey Abrams said in a statement to The Post. “The allegations have been heard and looked into, and for too many women, often, that is not the case.”

“I think this case has been investigated,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who has worked to bring sexual assault cases to light, said on MSNBC, adding: “I know the vice president as a major leader on domestic abuse. I worked with him on that.”

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) has said she was sexually assaulted in college and told NPR this when asked if this allegation concerned her: “Well, I think women should be able to tell their stories. I think that it is important that these allegations are vetted, from the media to beyond."

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), one of the first senators to say Franken needed to go, unequivocally supported Biden to The Post: “Vice President Biden has vehemently denied these allegations, and I support Vice President Biden.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said Thursday on MSNBC she is “satisfied” with how Biden has responded.

Biden has faced growing calls within the party to address the allegation himself, which MSNBC says he will do Friday morning.

What Trump and his campaign are saying

Trump cast doubt on the accusation, saying Thursday it could be a “false accusation.”

But his campaign has hyped it up. His son Donald Trump Jr. has shared Reade’s allegation on social media and given interviews about how he thinks it’s troublesome. He and Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, have accused journalists of not covering the allegation, suggesting they see political value for the president in talking about it.

It’ll be interesting to see what he says about this one. If he outright denies it he could loose the hardcore #metoo people who say “believe women no matter what.” There’s absolutely no way he would outright admit to it. I have a feeling that very little, if any, of his “response” will be in response to this. He’ll probably just talk about how much he respects women, and his voting record on women’s rights bills.

I don't believe any of Reade's allegations simply cause none of her stories match. Also the timing that they came out is very strange - after Bernie's supposed dropping out.

[Uiiop]

It’ll be interesting to see what he says about this one. If he outright denies it he could loose the hardcore #metoo people who say “believe women no matter what.” There’s absolutely no way he would outright admit to it. I have a feeling that very little, if any, of his “response” will be in response to this. He’ll probably just talk about how much he respects women, and his voting record on women’s rights bills.

I don't believe any of Reade's allegations simply cause none of her stories match. Also the timing that they came out is very strange - after Bernie's supposed dropping out.

She came out to news people in march and she tried to contact them months beforehand. She also sought legal and pr in January.

The stories not matching implies she denies what she initially says. She doesn't. She asserts that both things happened.

[Outer Sparta]

I don't believe any of Reade's allegations simply cause none of her stories match. Also the timing that they came out is very strange - after Bernie's supposed dropping out.

She came out to news people in march and she tried to contact them months beforehand. She also sought legal and pr in January.

The stories not matching implies she denies what she initially says. She doesn't. She asserts that both things happened.

If you're so fixated on Biden's case, why don't you look at the tons of Trump sexual assault cases?

[Outer Sparta]

I don't believe any of Reade's allegations simply cause none of her stories match. Also the timing that they came out is very strange - after Bernie's supposed dropping out.

She came out to news people in march and she tried to contact them months beforehand. She also sought legal and pr in January.

The stories not matching implies she denies what she initially says. She doesn't. She asserts that both things happened.

The Intercept? Hmm...

[New Socialist South Africa]

I'm not sure Biden will pick Harris, especially after she called him out for opposing busing in the debates. I think his campaign will know she will be asked about that if he picks her, and they know that the Republicans can go after her quite a bit for going from attacking him for working with segregationists to being his running mate.

I still think Tammy Baldwin is the best choice (of the conceivable options), and she could help win over more leftist voters, and help him win back Wisconsin, which I also think might be very close. I doubt he will pick her though.

I think he will probably pick Amy Klobuchar, especially if he promised her the position in return for her dropping out and endorsing him right before super Tuesday, or maybe Gretchen Whitmer, because they represent similar political beliefs and because she might be able to help him win back Michigan. Otherwise he might pick Stacey Abrams, but only if he thinks he really needs to double down on winning African-American voters, and if he thinks he has a chance of narrowly winning Georgia.

As for the 2024 Republican primary, I suspect Senator Tom Cotton might attempt to take up Trump's mantle, minus any of Trumps sporadic anti-interventionism and plus a desire for endless war with pretty much everyone other than Israel and Saudi Arabia, so the world might have another deranged American war hawk to look forward to.

Biden better not pick Harris or Abrams if he wants to win: one has too much baggage and the other is inexperience and is pandering for the job. Honestly, Klobuchar would be the smart move and Whitmer is not bad but I would keep my eyes out for Atlanta's Mayor or Val Demings as the surprise pick: despite lacking experience, Atlanta's Mayor was one of the first people to back him and stuck with him and Demings comes from a Swing State and has some experience. Of course, Biden can pick the Progressive route and Baldwin is ideal on paper but apparently she isn't interested.

Here's CNN's supposed top 10 list though it baffles me why Harris is still number one. https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/30/politics ... index.html

I think Klobuchar would be a mistake, but that's partly because I find her whole "we need to restore dignity to the White House" shtick almost as boring as it is irrelevant. I don't think she'll inspire any left wing voters who are hesitant about Biden to get behind him, and will instead just double down on that 'moderate with some reforms' lane. I also think a Vice Presidential debate between her and Mike Pence would be less interesting than watching paint dry.

I don't know much about Whitmer or Demmings, so I can't really comment on them. I still think Baldwin would be the best bet, whether she makes a big bid to appeal to Biden for the position or not, but I doubt he will pick her.

[New Socialist South Africa]

She came out to news people in march and she tried to contact them months beforehand. She also sought legal and pr in January.

The stories not matching implies she denies what she initially says. She doesn't. She asserts that both things happened.

If you're so fixated on Biden's case, why don't you look at the tons of Trump sexual assault cases?

It's almost like we should [whispers] do both.

[Uiiop]

She came out to news people in march and she tried to contact them months beforehand. She also sought legal and pr in January.

The stories not matching implies she denies what she initially says. She doesn't. She asserts that both things happened.

If you're so fixated on Biden's case, why don't you look at the tons of Trump sexual assault cases?

Because sadly there's has no movement on the media on trump.
They should but they don't. Doesn't mean we need to stop on biden.

She came out to news people in march and she tried to contact them months beforehand. She also sought legal and pr in January.

The stories not matching implies she denies what she initially says. She doesn't. She asserts that both things happened.

The Intercept? Hmm...

The nyt times confirmed that part of their reporting.

[Washington Resistance Army]

She came out to news people in march and she tried to contact them months beforehand. She also sought legal and pr in January.

The stories not matching implies she denies what she initially says. She doesn't. She asserts that both things happened.

If you're so fixated on Biden's case, why don't you look at the tons of Trump sexual assault cases?

We have. Everyone knows Trump is a creep.

[New Socialist South Africa]

She came out to news people in march and she tried to contact them months beforehand. She also sought legal and pr in January.

The stories not matching implies she denies what she initially says. She doesn't. She asserts that both things happened.

The Intercept? Hmm...

Ya, the same Intercept that broke the Christine Blasey Ford story. It's also almost like Tara Reade approached several news outlets with her story, and was turned away, and then eventually went to The Intercept because they were the only ones (other than right wing media) interesting it covering her story.

This is kind of the problem. When bigger news outlets turns you away, you have to go to smaller ones, and then when they publish your story, people turn around and say it must be unreliable because it comes from a smaller outlet.

[Ifreann]

Daily reminder that Sanders supporters voted for Clinton in greater numbers, faster, than Clinton supporters ever voted for Obama. So we can't really blame them for how they voted. It was just an overall shitty election year.

And more Sanders voters flipped Trump in the key four states than his margin of victory.

And some 90 million Americans didn't vote at all.

---

so apparently biden wants another disgusting sex pest to help him pick his vp

Birds of a feather.

[Zurkerx]

Biden better not pick Harris or Abrams if he wants to win: one has too much baggage and the other is inexperience and is pandering for the job. Honestly, Klobuchar would be the smart move and Whitmer is not bad but I would keep my eyes out for Atlanta's Mayor or Val Demings as the surprise pick: despite lacking experience, Atlanta's Mayor was one of the first people to back him and stuck with him and Demings comes from a Swing State and has some experience. Of course, Biden can pick the Progressive route and Baldwin is ideal on paper but apparently she isn't interested.

Here's CNN's supposed top 10 list though it baffles me why Harris is still number one. https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/30/politics ... index.html

I do like the Warren or Pressley route for him.

I don't think he'll select neither given there's apparently a big push by big donors to not select Warren and Pressley has some experience but she's not well known. There is this tug-a-war right now on two fronts: should Biden pick a woman of color or white, and should that woman be a Progressive or Moderate. Each has its advantages/disadvantages so this is going to be interesting to see where his VP Committee leads him.

[Pythaga]

I do like the Warren or Pressley route for him.

I don't think he'll select neither given there's apparently a big push by big donors to not select Warren and Pressley has some experience but she's not well known. There is this tug-a-war right now on two fronts: should Biden pick a woman of color or white, and should that woman be a Progressive or Moderate. Each has its advantages/disadvantages so this is going to be interesting to see where his VP Committee leads him.

Big donors means big money and big companies, both of which are incompatible with Warren. I’d be surprised if she got the job.

[Outer Sparta]

I do like the Warren or Pressley route for him.

I don't think he'll select neither given there's apparently a big push by big donors to not select Warren and Pressley has some experience but she's not well known. There is this tug-a-war right now on two fronts: should Biden pick a woman of color or white, and should that woman be a Progressive or Moderate. Each has its advantages/disadvantages so this is going to be interesting to see where his VP Committee leads him.

Pressley is a member of "The Squad" though she is the least recognized one. If not Warren, I definitely do like the Pressley route.

[Liriena]

She came out to news people in march and she tried to contact them months beforehand. She also sought legal and pr in January.

The stories not matching implies she denies what she initially says. She doesn't. She asserts that both things happened.

If you're so fixated on Biden's case, why don't you look at the tons of Trump sexual assault cases?

We did. In 2016. And I haven't forgotten. But I'll be damned if I'm gonna get dragged into some pathetic game of "who raped the most?" to see which rapist is the most electorally tolerable.

[Cisairse]

Biden set to break his silence tomorrow on the allegations reportedly.

Good. Now he has a chance to lay the issue to rest, or cause the dumpster fire to explode. For those not well-informed on the case, here's a WaPo breakdown:

A former Senate staffer for Joe Biden claims that he sexually assaulted her in 1993. Biden’s campaign says this “absolutely did not happen.”

The Washington Post and New York Times spent several weeks this past month carefully looking at Tara Reade’s allegation. Then, new potential evidence emerged over the past few days, and with that, renewed charges from across the political spectrum that the accusations against Biden aren’t being seriously vetted.

Biden to discuss Tara Reade's allegation on Friday, MSNBC says

President Trump’s campaign is seeking to weaponize this case against Democrats’ presumptive nominee. But it’s also a complicated allegation. Let’s break down what we know about it.

The timeline of the alleged assault and the allegation

1993: Former vice president Joe Biden was then a powerful senator, having been in the Senate for 20 years. At the time he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Tara Reade, 29, joins the office in late 1992 in an entry-level staff position. One of her duties was managing interns.

Spring 2019: Biden prepares to run for president, and about half a dozen women share stories of unwanted touching by Biden that they said made them feel uncomfortable. Biden said his intention was to offer affection and comfort as a politician but recognized times had changed and promised to be more respectful. He did not apologize and joked about the criticisms a few days later.

Reade was one of those women, saying that at least three times, Biden put his hands on her shoulders and the base of her neck. She also said she was asked to serve drinks at a reception and overheard a colleague suggest it was because she was pretty and Biden liked her legs. She told The Post she complained to supervisors and was asked to look for another job. In multiple interviews with The Post at the time, she does not mention sexual assault, and she gives varying reasons for her departure from his office at other times.

Early 2020: Voting in the Democratic presidential primary gets underway, and Reade is a vocal supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), though she told The Post that politics didn’t factor into her decision to make the allegation.

March: Biden shores up the Democratic nomination, and Reade gives an interview in a podcast where she makes the sexual assault allegation. She said she was delivering Biden a gym bag somewhere in the Capitol area (which has multiple buildings) but doesn’t remember exactly where. She said Biden pinned her against a wall, reached under her skirt (she said she wasn’t wearing any stockings) and pushed his fingers inside her. From her interview in April:

“He put me up against the wall and took the bag,” she said. “He reached up underneath my skirt … I remember two fingers … It was such a nightmare.”
She said he asked, “Do you want to go somewhere else?” She said that when she pulled away, he said, “Come on, man, I thought you liked me,” then told her that she meant “nothing” before finally grabbing her shoulders and saying, “You’re okay.
Biden, through a campaign spokeswoman, denied this ever happened.

April 12: The Post and the New York Times both publish investigative reports on the same day. Both reports find a friend who anonymously corroborates Reade’s story, but they also find half a dozen to a dozen former staffers at the time who do not recall something like this or any other assault allegation taking place.

April 24: A 1993 clip of a Larry King CNN show surfaces. A woman who called into the show that year identified as from the city where Reade’s mother would have been living at the time said her daughter was having “problems” with “a prominent senator” and wanted suggestions other than going to the press. She did not mention any names nor give details. Reade has since heard the recording and said it was her mom, who died in 2016.

April 27: Business Insider reports that Reade’s neighbor in the mid-1990s said that Reade told her Biden had “put his hand up her skirt and he put his fingers inside her,” which is what Reade accuses Biden of doing. This neighbor was willing to go on the record with her name. “I remember talking about it,” Lynda LaCasse told Business Insider. LaCasse lived next to Reade in California in 1995-1996, where Reade moved after working in Washington. She confirmed her comments in a text message to The Post, saying she is “a very strong Democrat and am supporting Joe Biden during this election."

Reade told The Post that after it happened she told her mother, her brother and a friend but did not mention a neighbor.

Reade went on to work for a California state senator, and Business Insider talked to a former staffer at the time, Lorraine Sanchez, who said Reade told her that a former boss in Washington, D.C., had sexually harassed her and that she had been fired after raising concerns. Sanchez did not recall whether Reade specifically mentioned Biden. Sanchez did not respond to messages from The Post.

What Biden has said

Biden hasn’t spoken about this publicly but plans to Friday morning on MSNBC. His campaign denies it. Here’s the campaign’s statement in full:

“Vice President Biden has dedicated his public life to changing the culture and the laws around violence against women,” said Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager and communications director. “He authored and fought for the passage and reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act. He firmly believes that women have a right to be heard — and heard respectfully. Such claims should also be diligently reviewed by an independent press. What is clear about this claim: It is untrue. This absolutely did not happen.”

Vetting the allegation

Sexual assault allegations are almost always difficult to assess for credibility. Because this allegation takes place decades ago, and because Reade initially came out with a different story about what happened, this one is also complicated.

Last year, Reade said Biden’s touching of her neck and shoulders made her feel uncomfortable. But she did not make any mention of sexual assault, which is far more serious. In fact, she appeared to defend Biden: “This is what I want to emphasize: It’s not him. It’s the people around him who keep covering for him,” she told The Post at the time. She added: “For instance, he should have known what was happening to me … Looking back now, that’s my criticism. Maybe he could have been a little more in touch with his own staff.”

A few people have corroborated parts of Reade’s accounts. Her former neighbor in California went on the record this week confirming Reade’s story, saying she’s sure she heard about it a few years after Reade alleges the assault occurred. Reade told The Post that she told her mother (who died), her brother (who initially told The Post he heard a different story that did not involve sexual assault and days later texted to say he remembered hearing Biden put his hand “under her clothes”), and a friend (who anonymously corroborated hearing her assault story).

Reade said she complained to three supervisors at the time in the Biden office. All three said they don’t remember any complaints from her. One, Biden’s executive assistant at the time, Marianne Baker, put out a statement via the Biden campaign specifically denying Reade’s allegation:

In all my years working for Senator Biden, I never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct, period — not from Ms. Reade, not from anyone. I have absolutely no knowledge or memory of Ms. Reade’s accounting of events, which would have left a searing impression on me as a woman professional, and as a manager.

Reade also says there is a paper trail, but journalists have been unable to locate a central piece of that. She said she filed a complaint with a congressional human resources office about her treatment in Biden’s office — but not about the assault allegation — in 1993. She said she does not have a copy of the complaint, and The Post could find no record of it. The office she likely would have filed a complaint with has since morphed into a different office. It’s possible that corroborating evidence of the complaint could be found at Biden’s archive at the University of Delaware, but the university said these papers will be sealed until two years after Biden retires from public life — unless he were willing to release them.

Reade said she filed a police report this April after talking to The Post and Times about the alleged incident because she was being harassed online about it. CNN obtained that report, which repeats what Reade has said publicly: “Subject-1 disclosed that she was the victim of a sexual assault which was committed by Subject-2 in 1993.” D.C. police said the investigation is inactive. Filing a false police report is a crime.

Reade told The Post she told a therapist earlier this year about what she says happened but would not give The Post the therapist’s notes.

Beyond the paper trail and corroboration, another thing that would bolster the accusation is if there is evidence of a repeated pattern of sexual misconduct by the accused. Extensive investigations by some of the nation’s best journalists have thus far found no found other accusers of Biden but did turn up denials by staffers who worked for him at the time that something like this could happen. By contrast, more than a dozen women have accused Trump of sexual assault or groping, and he is on tape bragging about such behavior.

The thorny politics for Biden and Democrats

Biden is the leading figure of a party that has striven to present itself as the antithesis to Trump, including — perhaps especially — when it comes to Trump’s behavior. As such, Democratic Party leaders have tried to position themselves as having a zero-tolerance policy of sexual misconduct among their leaders. Democratic senators pushed out Democrat Al Franken of Minnesota in 2018 after he faced multiple accusations yet denied them. Later that year, the party made a full-throated stand against Brett M. Kavanaugh to be on the Supreme Court after he was credibly accused of sexual assault when he was in high school.

That included Biden, who told reporters at the time that society should generally presume a woman alleging sexual assault is telling the truth: “For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you've got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she's talking about is real, whether or not she forgets facts, whether or not it's been made worse or better over time,” he said.

There are mixed perspectives in the Democratic Party about how to approach the accusations against Biden, six months before the presidential election. The main question Democrats seem to be struggling with: How do they convey caution about an accusation while also being supportive of a woman’s claim?

Biden is in the process of searching for a vice presidential candidate, whom he’s promised will be a woman, and some of the potential candidates have focused their comments on how they believe women have the right to be heard while in the next breath defending Biden.

Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) said in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle that Reade “has a right to tell her story. And I believe that, and I believe Joe Biden believes that, too.”

“I believe women deserve to be heard, and I believe that has happened here,” Stacey Abrams said in a statement to The Post. “The allegations have been heard and looked into, and for too many women, often, that is not the case.”

“I think this case has been investigated,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who has worked to bring sexual assault cases to light, said on MSNBC, adding: “I know the vice president as a major leader on domestic abuse. I worked with him on that.”

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) has said she was sexually assaulted in college and told NPR this when asked if this allegation concerned her: “Well, I think women should be able to tell their stories. I think that it is important that these allegations are vetted, from the media to beyond."

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), one of the first senators to say Franken needed to go, unequivocally supported Biden to The Post: “Vice President Biden has vehemently denied these allegations, and I support Vice President Biden.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said Thursday on MSNBC she is “satisfied” with how Biden has responded.

Biden has faced growing calls within the party to address the allegation himself, which MSNBC says he will do Friday morning.

What Trump and his campaign are saying

Trump cast doubt on the accusation, saying Thursday it could be a “false accusation.”

But his campaign has hyped it up. His son Donald Trump Jr. has shared Reade’s allegation on social media and given interviews about how he thinks it’s troublesome. He and Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, have accused journalists of not covering the allegation, suggesting they see political value for the president in talking about it.

It’ll be interesting to see what he says about this one. If he outright denies it he could loose the hardcore #metoo people who say “believe women no matter what.”

He's already lost those people.