Joe Biden, Senator from Citibank (oops, DELAWARE), to Run for President

The Internets don't ever forget, Kevin.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200429172519/https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/

Mother Jones HQ should collapse into a massive sinkhole

it's like a 500 word version of tombot's earlier posts, good god

This is one of the better pieces I've read, and it mentions what I said a couple hours ago about Reade's brother and Nathan Robinson (Reade's brother changed his story) and it ends with:

Dealing with this sort of accusation, in regard to political as opposed to legal consequences, is tricky. If Biden were merely one of several possible candidates for the Democratic nomination, I think it would be appropriate to take it into account in deciding whether to support him.

This goes back to the point people made constantly about Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination hearing. Standards for evaluating evidence in the context of a job interview should be completely different than standards for evaluating evidence in a legal proceeding, let alone in a criminal trial. (To be clear, I think the odds that Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations against Kavanaugh are true are vastly higher than the odds that Reade’s allegations against Biden are true). Nobody has a presumptive right to be on the Supreme Court or to become president of the United States. If you think there’s, say, a 5% chance that Reade’s sexual assault allegation is true, it’s perfectly appropriate to take that imputed probability into account at the margin, when deciding whether to support Biden against other Democratic candidates.

But once Biden is the presumptive Democratic nominee, then the calculus changes completely. It then becomes: should a 5% chance that this allegation is true lead to any attempt to keep Biden from getting the nomination? For reasons that are too obvious to belabor, the answer to that question is “no.” (For reasons that are even more obvious, the truth or falsity of this allegation is completely irrelevant to the question of whether one ought to vote for Biden instead of Trump)

I hate the last sentence, though.

What's more interesting, the percentage we believe something is true or the calculus we use to determine the percentage? Great fucking parlor game.

Sarah Jones making a lot of sense in NYMag.

citation needed

Biden wasn't doing remarkably well with black voters until the Clyburn endorsement and media narrative shift of South Carolina.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z),

I missed this -- you're right. I checked the polls.

She says she told her brother; the New York Times and the Washington Post confirmed that she did.

She did -- the brother said at first Reade shared the first version. Later, he changed the story and said it was the second.

Republicans Ridicule Democrats For Caring As Little About Sexual Assault As They Do https://t.co/EjBK6C7FQu pic.twitter.com/aTaFfgsxwZ

— The Onion (@TheOnion) April 29, 2020

So, after a reporter gets around to finally asking Biden about this, and he denies it vigorously, but Reade sticks by her story and no other details (evidence) emerges, the 5% club is now Moveon.org?

Anything is possible.

From the contents of that cnn story, I think his 5% figure seems poorly calculated. That is part of the difficulty with a story like this, the shape keeps changing as reporters dig for corroboration and find new testimony. What seemed sketchy or doubtful at first gains strength as details emerge. That's why the Republicans were desperate to avoid further investigation of Kavanaugh.

Every element of this will eventually be heavily scrutinized and vetted, but when the stakes are as consequential as these, the desire for complete certainty is enormous, and the chances for complete certainty are slender. It's in the nature of unwitnessed sexual assaults that any conclusions must be drawn from inconclusive evidence. We've been here before. It's all in how you weigh it.

It's past the point where Biden can get around this. We're all going to go through it again. Unless he steps aside.

It's all in how you weigh it.

I suspect many people will weigh it based on their desired outcome.

As the story has now developed, I'll repeat my judgment that the party's coalition can't hold together in the face of this.

lol, it seems that now that the primaries are "over" and the offense in question is rape, people are implicitly acknowleging the DNC's behind-the-scene' power to intervene.

Along the same lines:

Biden wasn't doing remarkably well with black voters until the Clyburn endorsement and media narrative shift of South Carolina.
― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z),

I missed this -- you're right. I checked the polls.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, April 29, 2020 6:04 PM (fifty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I guess now that Biden's been revealed as a fucking creep at best, it's okay to acknowlege this, too. Alfred iirc you refused to accept this point in the aftermath of SC, but now that Biden's a rapist it seems ok to admit the electorate is suggestible and the machine is well-oiled

"endorsements don't really matter," "you're insulting the SC black electorate over the age of 45" etc.

the LGM piece alfred linked to is solid and basically otm. the stuff about nathan robinson is appalling but not really surprising -- i've always thought he was terrible.

he's really more of a sexual assaulter than a full-blown rapist, can we agree on that at least?

I guess now that Biden's been revealed as a fucking creep at best, it's okay to acknowlege this, too. Alfred iirc you refused to accept this point in the aftermath of SC, but now that Biden's a rapist it seems ok to admit the electorate is suggestible and the machine is well-oiled

I've acknowledged he's at best a creep, and I won't stop there. You can CTRL-F my responses.

lol burrito

tbf handsy Biden has long been a fantastic meme

xp I know, I'm not contending you ever had any fondess for him

I hate the last sentence, though.

The goalposts for "Vote like an adult" sure are shifting...

I've never used those words, nor have I quoted Dennis Perrin as a wit.

the LGM piece alfred linked to is solid and basically otm.

It reads like someone finding excuses to question Reade's credibility. He admits that it's possible that Reade is telling the truth but that "it seems far more probable...that she's lying." He assures us that he's weighed the evidence, but ultimately it comes down to a feeling. His "5% chance" is a made-up number that allows him to look like he's being rigorous but is small enough to be easily waved away.

Asking people to overlook differences over M4A to vote for Biden are in an entirely different category from asking people to overlook accusations of sexual assault which are increasingly backed by credible reports of contemporary conversations. I expect that the media will soon realize they have to give full coverage to this story. Then comes the furor.

the media will soon realize they have to give full coverage

Because if they don't have to, they won't?

OTM, Aimless.

AP acknowledged the story today

LGM is always the hottest garbage in slightly-left-of-center-town

their commenters are even worse, of course

PUTIN PUTIN OMG PUTIN

Because if they don't have to, they won't?

I think the 'serious' news media actually hates stories like this one. The accusation and denial don't suggest any easy resolution into the necessary facts and it isn't a story political correspondents are accustomed to deal with. Only a few reporters are likely to do all the hard leg work tracking down the relevant facts. If anything, it will begin to gain prominence via social media, which will trigger the news media's instinct to see it as a story about 'how could this affect the horse race?' That would be the tipping point into broader coverage.

The Washington Post editorial board is calling on Biden to directly address the allegations and open up records from his Senate career that may offer information.

That's good.

Not good: The WaPo tweeted this article, and a bunch of people in the replies seem to think it's evidence of the mainstream media getting played by Trump/Russia/etc. ("We're gonna wake up on Nov. 4 with Tara Reade as the new email server.")

PUTIN PUTIN OMG PUTIN

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Thursday, April 30, 2020 1:11 AM (six minutes ago)

at this point the number of leftists sneering "lol everything's about russia amirite lol" probably surpasses the number of ppl still making unreasonable claims about russian interference

LGM is always the hottest garbage in slightly-left-of-center-town

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z)

LGM's excellent on labor matters, constitutional questions, and a sober view of the Horse Race.

at this point the number of leftists sneering "lol everything's about russia amirite lol" probably surpasses the number of ppl still making unreasonable claims about russian interference

Spitballing but you didn't read the LGM link referred to, the comments, or the specific comment they chose to highlight.

why are you reading comments?

They pulled it into the post!

i did read it, and the putin remark is a couple of sentences in a long comment (they're also accurate, fwiw).

LGM’s horse race coverage is the kind of nebbish bourgeois trash you might reasonably expect from the middle aged white guy small-time law professors that write it

Good God, Chris Hayes is trending because MSNBC viewers are mad that he is taking the assault allegations seriously. I'm going to lose my mind.

trending on my feed for the last 12 hours!

really great that this country has put us in this situation where we have to vote for a braindead sex pest in order to save ourselves from a bigger sex pest whose incompetence and malice is actively killing people

Still more electable than a socialist amirite.

https://memecrunch.com/meme/3H5ER/what-a-country-yakov/image.jpg?w=400&c=1

sex pest sounds a little too John Leguizamo. "Rapist-American", please.

Chris Dodd on the VP committee. Biden coming straight with a fuck youuuuuuu

At this rate he's just gonna go ahead and pick fucking Ivanka as veep just to make sure he really rubs it in.

5-D chess! The lefty insurrectionists of the Democratic Party leadership have been softening up the people for Bernie all along, by a carefully-planned programme of gradually emphasising what a horrible piece of shit Joe Biden is, while there's still time to dump him.

Everyone who even vaguely floated the idea of 'pushing Biden to the left' should have to put in a shift in a carnival dunk tank.

At this rate he's just gonna go ahead and pick fucking Ivanka as veep

not wrong, ugh

I still think there's an outside shot of Mitt Romney