{"id":14610,"date":"2020-05-14T10:12:57","date_gmt":"2020-05-14T17:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=14610"},"modified":"2020-05-14T10:12:59","modified_gmt":"2020-05-14T17:12:59","slug":"with-tara-reades-allegations-joe-bidens-campaign-is-only-the-latest-chapter-of-americas-accountability-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2020\/05\/14\/with-tara-reades-allegations-joe-bidens-campaign-is-only-the-latest-chapter-of-americas-accountability-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"With Tara Reade\u2019s Allegations, Joe Biden\u2019s Campaign Is Only the Latest Chapter of America\u2019s Accountability Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

Elise Swain<\/a> May 10 2020, 3:30\u00a0a.m. (theintercept.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Photo illustration: Elise Swain\/ The Intercept, Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AMERICA\u2019S ACCOUNTABILITY PROBLEM is being laid bare. Once a global superpower, today jeers of \u201cfailed state\u201d better describe our geriatric empire. Having survived impeachment, America\u2019s acquitted president poorly navigates an unclear future as a pandemic rages and a recession looms, leaving hundreds of thousands dead in its global wake. An embattled population barrels toward a national election between two accused rapists and known liars: President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joseph Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden, accused of sexual assault by one woman, has all but secured the Democratic nomination, gearing up for a general election against Trump, who faces at least 25 sexual misconduct allegations<\/a> that range in criminal severity. Both men deny all the allegations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden\u2019s accuser, Tara Reade<\/a>, was one of eight women who registered complaints of inappropriate<\/a> touching in April of last year \u2014 before Biden ever jumped into the presidential race. As Biden appeared likely to be the Democratic nominee, Reade came forward in late March and told her story about her former boss. In an interview with podcast host Katie Halper,<\/a> Reade said Biden penetrated her vagina with his fingers. She alleges the incident occurred in 1993, while she was an aide in his Senate office. What Reade describes is rape, according to the Department of Justice\u2019s own definition<\/a>. In an interview with Megyn Kelly<\/a>, Reade has called on Biden to end his presidential bid and \u201cstep forward and be held accountable.\u201dJoin Our NewsletterOriginal reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you.I\u2019m in<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now Reade, not Biden, is on trial in the American media landscape. Democrats, the party of \u201cbelieve women,\u201d are changing their tune, terrified at the prospect of another four years of a Trump presidency. After all, 2016 proved that lugging a litany of sexual assault and harassment accusations does not guarantee an electoral loss. Before the election, at least four women <\/a>were on record accusing Trump of sexual misconduct. American flags aloft, his fanatical base laughed along with the presidential candidate as he called his accusers liars and implied that they weren\u2019t attractive<\/a> enough for him to assault. \u201cWhen you\u2019re a star, they let you do it,\u201d Trump said on the infamous \u201cAccess Hollywood\u201d recording. \u201cGrab \u2019em by the pussy. You can do anything.\u201d This unearthed admission did not cost him the election either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Democrats continue to do nothing, Reade\u2019s accusation should prove that sexual misconduct allegations in either party are nothing more than a mild political inconvenience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Protestors demonstrating against torture stand in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., February 18, 2015. Photo: Saul Loeb\/AFP via Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE LACK OF impetus to replace Biden speaks to how Washington, D.C., has long neglected creating a culture of accountability. Some of the darkest chapters of U.S. history have been classified away. Our villainous past remains unprosecuted as bipartisan bombs continue falling. America\u2019s lack of understanding wrongdoing enables figures who should have atoned in order for the country to progress to instead linger in political relevance.RelatedDonald Trump, Joe Biden, and the Politics of Sexual Misconduct<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you supervised torture and destroyed evidence, like Gina Haspel<\/a>, you can still get promoted. If you\u2019re a war criminal, like George W. Bush<\/a>, you can be rehabilitated. If you\u2019re a judge, credibly accused of sexual misconduct, like Clarence Thomas<\/a> and Brett Kavanaugh<\/a>, you, too, can become a Supreme Court justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, high-profile Democratic endorsements for Biden signal that a quest for the truth \u2014 and a reckoning for the allegations against him \u2014 will never come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s really what\u2019s corrosive about this moment, is this idea that you can try to shred Tara Reade\u2019s credibility and stick up for Joe Biden and still say that you have any kind of commitment to ending sexual violence, that you have any kind of commitment to women\u2019s rights,\u201d Melissa Gira Grant, a staff writer at the New Republic, explained on Intercepted<\/a>. \u201cI don\u2019t think you get to have it both ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE NAME Lucy Flores may be all but forgotten in an exhausting year of political reporting. Flores was the first<\/a> to come forward and register publicly that an encounter with Biden made her deeply uncomfortable. In a viral essay<\/a>, Flores described how, in 2015, then-Vice President Biden made her feel \u201cuneasy, gross, and confused\u201d as she campaigned for lieutenant governor in Nevada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel him come up close behind me, and that\u2019s when he leans in and he lingers around my head,\u201d Flores recounted on Intercepted<\/a>. \u201cI hear him kind of inhale. And then he proceeds to plant this low kiss on the top of my head.\u201d (Biden denied<\/a> that he had acted inappropriately toward Flores.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seven more women<\/a> came forward with similar stories of Biden\u2019s manner of unwanted, inappropriate touching. Descriptions told of how his hands intimately lingered on everything from the women\u2019s necks, shoulders, backs, or thighs. Some say his forehead pressed against theirs. Noses so close that they rubbed together. Breathing in the smell of hair. Kissing the back of the head.\u201cThe bottom line with that kind of behavior is entitlement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe bottom line with that kind of behavior is entitlement,\u201d Gira Grant explained. \u201cBoth entitlement to someone\u2019s physical body, but then also entitlement to characterize what happened through whatever lens you have that allows you to continue that behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flores was precise in calling out the inequality inherent in how women\u2019s bodies were assumed to be touchable, especially by powerful men. \u201cMost people acknowledge that men don\u2019t usually kiss, smell, rub noses with, place their hands on the thighs of, or touch foreheads with random women they don\u2019t know,\u201d Flores opined in the New York Times<\/a>. \u201cYet some men do, especially powerful men, who are protected by privilege and a crew of self-interested enablers who don\u2019t want to lose their access to power by calling out the obvious.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Lucy Flores in the lobby of the office building where she works in downtown Los Angeles, on May 25, 2019. Photo: Jenna Schoenefeld for The Washington Post via Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

WHEN ALLEGATIONS OF inappropriate kissing and touching surfaced against Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., from seven accusers<\/a>, dozens of his Democratic Senate colleagues quickly called for his resignation. With a professed zero-tolerance position for any sexual misconduct, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., led the charge<\/a>. Within weeks, Franken took the incredibly rare step of resigning from his Senate seat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden, apparently lacking a particularly damning enough photograph<\/a> of misconduct, has been given a pass. And Gillibrand, despite Reade\u2019s allegation, has maintained her support and endorsement<\/a> of Biden. Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez has dismissed<\/a> the accusations. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., also \u201csupports<\/a> Biden.\u201d A day after Business Insider\u2019s investigation<\/a> further corroborated Reade\u2019s story, Hillary Clinton, too, threw in her high-profile endorsement<\/a> of Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Flores, Biden\u2019s conduct that day was \u201cdisqualifying<\/a>.\u201d But, for the Democratic establishment, perhaps fearing both more years of Trump and a Bernie Sanders presidency, Biden\u2019s conduct has been accepted. His character has been troublingly defended by colleagues \u2014 especially by women eyeing a vice presidential nomination<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As complaints from women mounted, Biden told reporters<\/a> last year, \u201cI\u2019m not sorry for any of my intentions. I\u2019m not sorry for anything that I have ever done. I\u2019ve never been disrespectful intentionally to a man or a woman.\u201d With this, Biden revealed an inability to comprehend culpability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is what he\u2019s known for,\u201d Flores told Intercepted. \u201cHe is not known for voluntarily or willingly acknowledging that he has made mistakes in the past, whether it\u2019s around his position<\/a> on the Hyde Amendment, whether it was around how he mishandled<\/a> the Clarence Thomas hearings, school busing and segregationist<\/a> policies \u2014 I mean, the list is pretty long.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BIDEN\u2019S RECORD IS long and troubling<\/a>. Some voters, myself included, are struggling with a moral debate<\/a> in response to the electoral options before us. We face an impossible choice and feel disgust at being put in this position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a mind-fuck.\u201d Gira Grant said, about the inevitable choice between Trump and Biden. \u201cI want to appreciate how that feels and how uncomfortable that is. I think it\u2019s just, like, ripping something back about our culture and our politics and revealing it to us. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s necessarily new.\u201d\u201cI think it\u2019s just, like, ripping something back about our culture and our politics and revealing it to us. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s necessarily new.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet it isn\u2019t surprising. Biden\u2019s inability to admit fault \u2014 he has said<\/a>, \u201cI am not sorry for anything I have ever done\u201d \u2014 simply shows that he is a byproduct of an institution of impunity. America, too, doesn\u2019t do apologies. Reparations for black people and native people are nowhere in sight. We didn\u2019t prosecute torture and we won\u2019t prosecute war crimes. The cancer at the core of this nation is one of fundamental injustice, hidden beneath platitudes of freedom, liberty, and equality for all. To remove Biden would be to indict American exceptionalism itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liberals like Biden, who believe that America\u2019s divisions can be healed by a new president, don\u2019t see this country as built on exploitation. To understand how we heal, we have to view America through the painful lens of wrongs committed. Accountability must be viewed as a feminist issue, especially in a nation that wove oppression into every fiber of its flag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

America should live in shame until we admit fault, recognize hurt, and ask for forgiveness. Joe Biden can go first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CONTACT THE AUTHOR:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Elise Swain<\/a> elise.swain@\u200btheintercept.com<\/a> @eliseswain<\/a>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elise Swain May 10 2020, 3:30\u00a0a.m. (theintercept.com) Photo illustration: Elise Swain\/ The Intercept, Getty Images AMERICA\u2019S ACCOUNTABILITY PROBLEM is being laid bare. Once a global superpower, today jeers of \u201cfailed state\u201d better describe our geriatric empire. Having survived impeachment, America\u2019s acquitted president poorly navigates an unclear future as a pandemic rages… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14610"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14610"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14611,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14610\/revisions\/14611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}