Re: Democratic Challengers: Starting this thread to Own The Libs!
First off, there is a difference between assault (any unwanted or offensive touching) and sexual assault (an unwanted or offensive touching of specific body parts) that you're ignoring. They're treated differently for reasons that should be obvious.
Prosecutorial discretion is also important. I don't want cops wasting their time pulling over people going one 1 mph over the speed limit, and I don't think Dubya giving Merkel an unwanted shoulder rub is worth taking to court, either. Everyone cringed, the late night comics got free material for a couple nights, and we moved on.
Biden's known conduct falls into the latter category. I don't think he does it because he's trying to dominate women or show power over them; I honestly think it's just his nature. It's in the vein of southerners calling strangers sweetie or sugar. Doesn't make it right or appropriate, but it doesn't make him Kavanagh or Trump, either.
And how can you claim you don't know the latest allegation when 3 or 4 of us have repeated it on here. Ms. Reade now claims that at some unspecified time at an unspecified location, Biden stuck his fingers in her glory hole.
Being called sweetie or sugar or being told “Bless your heart” by a Southerner aren’t the same things as unwanted touching. I’ve never experienced any unwanted touching, but I’ve heard bless your heart, sweetie, and sugar a lot since I live in the South. I don’t think anyone here is arguing that Biden is as bad as Trump. Unless it turns out Biden was helping Hilary Clinton run the prostitution ring out of that pizza parlor basement, I’ll vote for him. Hell, I’d probably still vote for him. D > R, protest votes and/or staying home aren’t options. Too much on the line for this election, including Tara Reade’s story.
That said, based on what y’all have said might be her agenda though, I can’t get behind it at this point. She explains herself in the Vox story. I’m not Tara Reade. I don’t know what her motives are, other than what she tells me. There’s also the evidence. The evidence may never come out, because it sounds like the only people who were there were Reade and Biden. Being a Bernie Sanders supporter, and a Putin supporter, may make her more likely to include the digital penetration story during the primaries for maximum effect to help Sanders/Russia/Trump...but even if that were true, which I don’t think it is, would that make the underlying story, that Biden sexually assaulted her, false? Just like we’re discussing the difference in severity between unwanted kissing on necks/shoulder rubbing versus digital penetration, Reade also knows the difference. Better than any of us cis white guys, I’d imagine. She probably knew the backlash she’d face, not necessarily from the media, but the general public, for updating her story. Would helping Sanders, or Russia, or Trump, or all three, be worth the backlash she’d receive for telling the rest of the story? Again, I don’t knowTara Reade. I don’t know her motives. Maybe that is enough for her. She hasn’t told me that’s the reason yet, and neither has the evidence.
