The effort to demonize him now is so obviously driven by his potential Democratic primary opponents.
The knives are out for Joe Biden.
To read some of the media accounts, Biden is the latest politician to run afoul of the “MeToo” era. His accusers have followed the usual script, “breaking their silence” after much introspection. They insist they aren’t looking for fame or book deals; they just want the truth to come out.
What truth? Biden is handsy. And, to borrow a Bidenism, this is a big f***ing deal.
But is it?
I come neither to praise Biden nor to bury him. The allegation that he’s too physically familiar with people — and not just women, by the way — is only slightly more shocking than revelations that he talks too much, says weird things, and misuses the word “literally.”
As Biden himself might say, “We’ve known all this about Joe for literally, not figuratively, a billion years.”
Young’ns could be forgiven for not knowing that Biden is the most motormouthed politician of the past half-century. Everyone in Washington has a story that begins with Biden promising to offer a few brief remarks and ends with the storyteller waking up years later like Rip Van Winkle to Biden saying: “in conclusion.”
………
Then there’s the handsy stuff. Biden is overly familiar with people. He touches and hugs them a lot. He rubs women’s shoulders uninvited. He sneaks up on them and smells their hair — which, admittedly, is the sort of thing you’d expect from a sex offender at a public library.
But that’s the thing: It’s not that.
As with the rest, we’ve known this about Biden for a long time. Conservatives had great fun with it under President Obama. Just Google the videos and images of Biden touching women like a chef testing the produce.
Hillary Clinton once told Biden she thought he and her husband Bill were so similar they must have been “separated at birth.” She meant it as a compliment. Really. But there’s no evidence Biden ever behaved in the allegedly sexually predatory way, or in the non-allegedly adulterous way, Bill Clinton behaved.
What Biden has in common with Bill is a particular kind of politician’s mix of insecurity and arrogance. It drives them to think they can win over anybody, sometimes by simply talking them to death. Biden’s touching is part charm offensive, part power move. It’s a way to make a human connection. It’s also a way to signal that he has the social authority to invade your personal space. It’s of a piece with his belief that everyone should feel fortunate to listen to him spend an hour offering a few brief comments.
I never liked Biden’s act, but the effort to demonize him now is so obviously driven by his potential Democratic primary opponents. I don’t think it will work. It may cost Biden with young activists in the party who think even gendered pronouns are triggering. But there’s a reason he leads the polls. Democrats may be unified in their opposition to President Trump, but I think the older ones (who tend to vote at a higher rate in primaries) are also nostalgic for “normal” politics. Biden is more liberal than people claim, but he’s a known quantity, and he’s not a socialist.
That may be why the left wing of the party is out to get him. It’s also why he would be a formidable nominee.
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The effort to demonize him now is so obviously driven by his potential Democratic primary opponents. https://t.co/ApkeKX6Fol via @JonahNRO pic.twitter.com/owvjqu9bAX
— National Review (@NRO) April 5, 2019
Of course, this is all political. Biden is getting the Kavanaugh/Moore treatment. Someone or some group doesn’t want Biden to be the Democrat nominee for president, so they are probably paying women to come forward and accuse him of all but rape. It is well known that Biden is a bit overly demonstrative, but now there are accusations being made without any real proof., and while Biden’s actions are weird to say the least, I can see nothing in them that rises to the level of criminality. I don’t care for Biden’s politics, but I will defend him as I did Kavanaugh and Moore. Show me some evidence of criminal wrongdoing. If you can’t, then I am not going to take you seriously.
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