Election 2020

[nots]

Did they know about the allegations when they endorsed him?

Article came out in the NYT on April 12 but was in the Guardian last week of March (25th I think) and all the endorsements were after that but someone should check my memory. Again, it certainly didn’t get a lot of coverage but it was out there.

[GwynnInTheHall]

Do you feel it's necessary to wait until every allegation has been absolutely proven or refuted to make a time sensitive decision. BTW they endorsed Biden on the 14 Sanders had met with him days before and Obama has known about this for a decade or more. Pelosi is crap so I don't care about her, hopefully she's gone soon

I guarantee if this has legs at all, Sanders will withdraw his endorsement.

Where is that threshold for you?

[nots]

Do you feel it's necessary to wait until every allegation has been absolutely proven or refuted to make a time sensitive decision. BTW they endorsed Biden on the 14 Sanders had met with him days before and Obama has known about this for a decade or more. Pelosi is crap so I don't care about her, hopefully she's gone soon

I guarantee if this has legs at all, Sanders will withdraw his endorsement.

Where is that threshold for you?

I don’t understand what you’re asking....my threshold for what? I’m not a Biden guy—I would never endorse him (and who would care if I did). I was going to vote for him (pending him picking a reasonable-to-me VP candidate) but for absolutely no other reason than he isnt Trump. I don’t think very highly of him and it’s less and less with each passing year. I take these allegations seriously, but as with Kavanaugh, they are 30 years old and made by someone who strongly supported a different candidate in the primary and seems a little ‘flighty’. The fact that the accuser has some backup from people she talked to shortly after the incident is a point in her favor. However, Biden has been in the public eye for a long time and to me, it’s a pretty big jump from sniffing hair to fingering. It would seem to me if he was so out of control as to do that, there would be other accusations floating around either before or after her time frame. I’m open to hearing more evidence.
I just think no major Democrat (Sanders included) is going to walk back their endorsement at this point absent much more evidence. And again, where are you going to find evidence from 30 years ago that is more than he said/she said? Maybe a diary...I don’t know, hard to think of any really.
The cold, ruthless calculation is if this thing has legs, replace him now. But I think it would be unjust.

[fuhrdog]

I'd vote for a turnip over Trump

Pretty much agree. Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court...Trump is President...I may have to hold my nose but Biden or Trump is a very easy decision for me.

[cardboardbox]

I may have to hold my nose but Biden or Trump is a very easy decision for me.

me too

[Sour Masher]

me too

I really can't comprehend how anyone continues to think Donald Trump is a component leader that we should continue to rely on given how badly he handled the COVID-19 outbreak initially, and how idiotic he so frequently shows himself to be on this issue. It is a window into his policy and decision making on all things. He should not be president. At least Biden has come out and said he plans to put competent, well respected experts in charge around him (I think he was saying this, because he knows some are scared he is losing it). A vote for Biden is more a vote for his WH and cabinet at this point, which I believe will be far better for the country. I still very much prefer/hope the figure head (Biden) could get replaced, though.

Do you think Trump continually downplaying this while this disease was spreading quickly through the country was indicative of good leadership? Do you think he has handled this crisis effectively?

[cardboardbox]

I really can't comprehend how anyone continues to think Donald Trump is a component leader that we should continue to rely on given how badly he handled the COVID-19 outbreak initially, and how idiotic he so frequently shows himself to be on this issue. It is a window into his policy and decision making on all things. He should not be president. At least Biden has come out and said he plans to put competent, well respected experts in charge around him (I think he was saying this, because he knows some are scared he is losing it). A vote for Biden is more a vote for his WH and cabinet at this point, which I believe will be far better for the country. I still very much prefer/hope the figure head (Biden) could get replaced, though.

Do you think Trump continually downplaying this while this disease was spreading quickly through the country was indicative of good leadership? Do you think he has handled this crisis effectively?

Neither of these guys should be president, but I have to pick one and as someone said, I'd vote for a turnip before Biden.

Trump did some good, did some bad, overall probably about average.

[Teenwolf]

I mean recently as in the last few weeks, and the very first reports I saw on this were from the Hill and other left-wing sources (that video that TW posted back in late March). Why hasn't the right picked up on this early? Maybe don't care or can't sell it with their guy doing the same? Or maybe, more generously, it didn't get amplified until more corroboration came out. I don't know. If this were out there in a substantive form prior to March 26th, I'd imagine TW, who was looking for all kinds of dirt on Biden for months, would have put it out there. If it were out there 6 months ago, maybe it would have mattered to the primary results.

ETA: I guess, cynically, it makes sense the earliest reporting on this would be from the far left, because they wanted to influence the primaries. The right didn't. They would prefer to sit on this until the general, weakening an already weak candidate. That isn't how it should work, but that is probably how it works. Still, for it to have really had an impact, it needed to be out there earlier than March. I don't know what can happen now to fix it. Something should happen, but it probably won't.

You need to read my posts more carefully. It seems to have skipped past everyone that Tara Reade has tried to hold Biden accountable for decades while being shut down at every attempt, including the organization founded to help sexual assault victims face powerful abusers. THEY shut her down, in January. THEY were run by someone who joined Biden's team as a campaign strategist! That's one of many many attempts she's made to bring her accusation to light.

I appreciate that you now believe that Biden is guilty of this. You're a reasonable guy. BUT, it's absolutely wrong to imply that Tara Reade's story is questionable in any way due to "timing". She's been on it for decades. That's why the clip of her mom on Larry King from '93 surfaced. She spoke out when Lucy Flores made her accusation... she spoke out in Dec/Jan talking with Time's Up org... she filed a congressional complaint at the time... she told several people, including other Biden staffers about the incident... she was FIRED over the incident, there's a record of her being let go. She's been talking about it all this time. Nobody will listen. It's irresponsible to imply that Tara Reade's failure to pursue these charges earlier is in any way her fault, because she did pursue the claim much earlier, and many times since it happened.

"It also gets worse, as this latest victim attempted to tell her story a year ago when the other allegations came to light, but she was finally silenced in January by the Time's Up organization, supposed to support women who were sexually abused, assaulted, harassed... who's leader is a literal campaign strategist for Biden. Now the question is, will the media cover this story? So far, 2 days now, only lefty news has covered it plus 1 article from Yahoo."

By the way, Sanders was also asked about the Tara Reade accusation, and he said that it needs to be investigated, and he supports pursuing any investigation that would resolve the issue.

If Sanders and Biden were close enough in pledged delegates at the DNC convention that super-delegates could pick Sanders, even knowing Biden is a grab-em-by-the-pussy piece of shit with dementia who WILL lose to Trump for these reasons... they would STILL vote for Biden. It's not about beating Trump, it's about beating the voters, about maintaining the neo-liberal power structure. Blue no matter who voters are meant to bend over and take it, and most are happy to. Or as Jill Biden said "swallow it". Take your pick.

I'm glad that even you can finally see what an irredeemable piece of human garbage Joe Biden is.

[Sour Masher]

TW, my understanding of the timeline on this, and it may be off, as I haven't followed it until recently, is that Reade made her accusations public in April 2019 and at that time the accusation was that he touched her inappropriately, as he has been known to do, in public, to just about everyone. She wrote in April of 2019 of being touched on the shoulder, being caressed, being made to feel uncomfortable. That was his MO and for most people that did not rise to the level of disqualifying him, and on that front many vocal metoo advocates who supported Biden agreed.

It wasn't until late March of this year--March 25th, just a month ago, that Reade revised her claims to include digital perpetration. I think it is revisionary history and kinda sanctimonious to call out everyone who now sees these new accusations and even more recent corroboration as disqualifying but did not rallying against Biden on this issue before. These are recent developments in this case and I think it is fair for me and anyone else to reevaluate Biden based on these recent developments. Let's see how this information is treated now and judge accordingly. The accusations prior to last month were simply different than they are now. Isn't it fair that some people will reevaluate Biden based on them?

[Sour Masher]

I will say, TW, you have hated Biden for a long time. That said, when you came across video of Biden from a few years ago praising Sanders and talking candidly about the value of his message, you said, that Biden was a good dude you could get behind, or something to that affect. Your argument was mainly he was not that guy anymore and he was losing his mind and we should all see that (an argument I agreed with). If you really knew back then he had digitally penetrated Tara Reade, would you have written that? I don't think you would have, and I don't judge you for it, because you didn't know. No one knew.

I don't know why I'm getting push back from folks on my comment about Reade's "recent accusations" and lamenting the fact that they were not made earlier, or bashing the media for not reporting on this recent development earlier. The NYT did investigative reporting on this. It took some time to gather all the facts. She came out with this just a month ago. If they were really in the tank for Biden, wouldn't they have buried this? The reason it is all over the news now is that MSM did their jobs, or at least some of them did--I'm not defending CNN or MSNBC, who are not objective, other than to say they mostly just piggy back on actual/real journalists like those working for real news outlets like NYT, so there is some natural lag for their secondhand editorializing.

If she had shared this part of the story earlier, maybe it would have had an impact. That said, I'm not judging her for that. Admitting to being a victim is embarrassing. But I can still lament how that information back in April 2019 or earlier may have changed the primary for the better.

[GwynnInTheHall]

Dear DNC you're about ready to fuck this up again.

[DMT]

Dear DNC you're about ready to fuck this up again.

What now?

[GwynnInTheHall]

What now?

They need to get in front of this thing with Biden, having Hillary endorse him the day after the sexual assault charge is corroborated is pretty transparent. Pulling Sanders from the NY primarily was a stupid move as well and yes I believe election officials in NY were told to do so by the DNC. Their hatred for Sanders is going to be their undoing.

[DMT]

They need to get in front of this thing with Biden, having Hillary endorse him the day after the sexual assault charge is corroborated is pretty transparent. Pulling Sanders from the NY primarily was a stupid move as well and yes I believe election officials in NY were told to do so by the DNC. Their hatred for Sanders is going to be their undoing.

He suspended his campaign, give me a break.

"All four of the people Mrs. Reade says were notified of an official complaint told the New York Times on the record that they have absolutely no recollection of any such conversation -- and that they certainly would have remembered it, especially because this alleged conduct would have been so wildly out of character for Joe Biden." 0 for 4, yet the left just wants to assume it's true, because they'd rather Trump win than Biden. It's fucking pathetic.

[Sour Masher]

He suspended his campaign, give me a break.

"All four of the people Mrs. Reade says were notified of an official complaint told the New York Times on the record that they have absolutely no recollection of any such conversation -- and that they certainly would have remembered it, especially because this alleged conduct would have been so wildly out of character for Joe Biden." 0 for 4, yet the left just wants to assume it's true, because they'd rather Trump win than Biden. It's fucking pathetic.

Here is an excerpt from a recent CNN piece on this about the corrobohttps://www.cnn.com/2020/04/28/polit...bor/index.htmlrating neighbor (the woman who says she remembers Reade making this claim back when it happened):

Now 60 years old, LaCasse describes herself as "very anti-Trump" and a "very strong Democrat" with "strong political leanings." She liked Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren the most during the Democratic primaries, she said, and in the general election, she plans to vote for Biden, whom she said she always viewed as an "OK guy."
"I don't know that I have any choice," she said about her plan to vote for Biden in November. "I'm not going to vote for Trump."

A couple of things strike me about this:

1. If she is being truthful about her politics and preferences, she has no political motivation to lie--she says she is still voting for Biden, which is a hell of an indictment of our current POTUS; why do you think/assume she is lying, or do you think Reade was lying way back in the 90s?
2. I am surprised she says that she STILL views Biden as an "ok guy" if she believes Reade's claims. The holding her nose to vote for him, I actually get, given the alternative, but the "ok guy" part is perplexing. Maybe she doesn't think what he did is as bad as many do. I actually know some older women who have very different hierarchies and penalties for sexual crimes than most younger people do, thinking the off-color remarks and inappropriate compliments on appearance and even some inappropriate touching as in a different universe from sexual assault, although a hand forced up the skirt has always been pretty obviously assault, so I really don't get that comment from her. Maybe she can just compartmentalize that sort of behavior from the overall person, which, again, speaks to a radically different perspective than the dominant one today.