Joe Biden accused of sexual assault

We could have impeachment hearings, but we have to elect Biden first. It is how we handled the Clinton charges.

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If so that would seem to create a pretty scary precedent for the Senate to influence the outcome of Presidential elections.

If there’s any kind of formal investigation into someone running for national office it should remain as nonpartisan as possible.

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It’s a real quagmire.

I don’t think it’s right to criticize the timing. For the victim blamers, the only right time to level a sexual assault allegation is never. And she made the complaint of inappropriate touching a while ago. This isn’t out of the blue.

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Accusation of Joe Biden being inappropriate is not new.
Sexual Assault accusation for Joe Biden March 2020.
Neither are ok but one is much different than the other.

Somewhat tangential to the topic of this thread, but:

A point that is severely underappreciated in liberal discourse is that, for many American women, abortion is already functionally banned. Primarily working-class women, disproportionately women of colour, particularly but not exclusively in the South.

The combination of TRAP laws and unaffordable healthcare has rendered Roe effectively null and void for all but the privileged. What is at threat from the current Roberts court is not reproductive freedom per se; it is the extension of the current lack of freedom to the previously-immune white middle class.

As before:

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Try thinking about it from her perspective, rather than his. It’s not all about Joe.

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Honestly, I was thinking from a national perspective. I believe her. This doesn’t preclude me from being disappointed in her timing.

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Either we believe women who come forth with an accusation until they are proven wrong or we give the bennefit of the doubt to the accused until they are proven guilty. What we can’t do with a straight face or any sense of honor is do both depending on who is involved on either side of the accusation. Partisan hackery has no place in sexual assault perspective.

You speak about the timing like this is totally in her control. She could not decide when a journalist would take her seriously and interview her. She could only refuse, which would be a tough thing to do when you’ve struggled to be heard. Why would she choose that? So it does not complicate the election for Joe? You expect her to look out for his well being?

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Or we give both parties the benefit of the doubt, assuming neither guilt nor innocence.

“Believe women” was never meant to be interpreted as “any accusation must be taken as objective fact until proven wrong,” it means “don’t dismiss accusations of sexual assault or start from the assumption that women have sinister motives.”

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I could not agree with you more here, unfortunately, that is not how this is playing out in the media. So far they are completely ignoring her relative to accusers in the past. Unless the media is looking for deffinitive evidence before running with the story when before all they needed was a high profile attacker and an accusation.

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Her accusations reported by the Union in April of 2019 would have received more attention had she included the sexual assault.

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The question is what we do when we are faced with an unknowable. The accusation appears lucid, specific, and clear - it is credible. The accused has no counter evidence to make the accusation appear false - I was out of town that day, I was in so and so’s office at that hour and they will vouch for that.

So what do we do? Biden is not on trial, and nobody is threatening to put him in jail. If Biden wanted to do crossword puzzles sitting in his porch rocker for the next 4 years, I’d say good for him - he gets to impose his desired reality on the rest of the world, deny it happened, and go on with his life.

But that’s not what’s going on. Biden is asking to be made president of the united states, and he, and his party, does not get to impose his desired reality on the rest of us and ignore this thing. The proper thing to do would be to withdraw, and if he did not do the proper thing the DNC should have imposed it on him. Instead we go into the general election with not only a sex scandal on his score card but a national party convivial, just like a fucking Republicans.

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sure - and if she had video footage, that would have received a lot more attention too. The fact is the feelings around what to do when your in her position are complicated, painful, and you may not make the best choice for your media presentation when you are acting to limit your pain. Faulting her for such is just lacking empathy.

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Even if he didn’t do it?

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I absolutely agree Biden should withdraw.
Shit happens to all of us. What defines you as a person isn’t the shit, but the choices we make after the shit. When given the opportunity to make a difference she chose to tell a story about Joe’s lingering hand on her shoulder, and how shell felt humiliated because he thought she was attractive asked her to serve drinks. That’s just not going to move the needle, it’s too easy for many people to be dismissive of this story. Now after the primaries are over she chose to tell the world that Joe held her up against the wall and put his fingers inside her. What, that is shocking and despicable! I’m sorry but fuck that, stakes are too high the only thing this accomplishes now is helping Trump win reelection.

IOKIYAD.

Apparently.

But that’s nothing new.

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The whole point is that we can’t know that he didn’t do it. So yeah, he should step down. And if the unknowable truth is he didn’t do it, well then I’m sorry Joe, sometimes bad shit happens to people, you included.

Isn’t that the outcome that we all argued for with Kavanaugh? Or why did we make such a fuss if we were going to say “but even if he didn’t do it?”.

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I agree that this is true. But the fault for that lies with Biden who should have considered the possible outcomes of this accusation and done the right thing by dropping out.