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Title: Who Are You Kidding?
Author: Gabriel Kuhn
Date: May 13, 2020
Language: en
Topics: Democratic Party, liberalism, sexual assault
Source: Retrieved on 18th June 2021 from https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/05/13/who-are-you-kidding-the-democratic-party-and-the-joe-biden-fiasco/

Gabriel Kuhn

Who Are You Kidding?

The accusations against the projected Democratic Party presidential

nominee, Joe Biden, trouble and confuse U.S. liberals. As a result, they

say surprising and, at times, outrageous things. I suppose this is the

consequence of deeming Joe Biden to the most likely candidate to oust

Donald Trump from office, something so important that you’re ready to

sacrifice both reason and compassion.

We are told that this is a “messy affair.” If that means that any

accusation of sexual misconduct is messy without witnesses or

independent evidence, it is but a truism. If it means that the Joe Biden

situation in particular is messy, it is false.

I am neither a U.S. citizen nor resident. I lived in the country for

several years and received some of my formal education there, but I

haven’t been allowed to visit since 2005. I follow the political

developments in a manner that anyone with political interest is forced

to do, no matter where they live, because what happens in the U.S. is

highly relevant for us all. But, emotionally, I feel rather detached at

this point and the ins and outs of U.S. realpolitik are of little

concern to me. Maybe that is why the Biden affair doesn’t look

particularly messy to me at all but rather clear-cut. What follows is a

short sketch of what it looks like to me from the safe distance of

northern Europe.

If Joe Biden did what Tara Reade accuses him of, anyone who doesn’t

share the Trumpian notion of personal morals being nothing but

inconvenient baggage on the way to personal success would have to

consider him unfit to occupy the highest public office in the country.

As, in all likelihood, no one will ever know for sure what happened

between Tara Reade and Joe Biden except for Tara Reade and Joe Biden, it

means that everyone endorsing him, campaigning for him, and joining his

team must give him the benefit of the doubt. Sadly, the script has been

all too familiar: First, you remain silent and hope that the accusation

will just go away. When it doesn’t, you deploy longtime allies as

character witnesses: “Joe Biden? Can’t be!” Then you say loud and clear,

but without providing any explanation, that you didn’t do it. If you’re

a liberal, you might have learned to add some lip service, emphasizing

the accuser’s right to “be heard” or to “speak her truth” – all the

while missing the irony that these generous concessions are entirely

meaningless when you’ve already called the accuser a liar. Regardless,

if the accusation doesn’t go away at this point, you sulk.

The fact that it is hypocritical of conservative pundits to call Joe

Biden and his supporters hypocrites doesn’t change the fact that they

are. Given the reactions of prominent Democrats to similar accusations

of political opponents, they have exactly two options in this case if

they want to maintain at least some level of integrity. The first is to

give the benefit of the doubt to Tara Reade, not Joe Biden. The second

is to concede that matters such as these are messier than what they made

them out to be under different circumstances. I have not seen much of

either in Democratic Party ranks, and none in the “establishment.”

Instead, we are served a mixture of denial, hand-wringing, and verbiage.

Meanwhile, the public doesn’t even get to hear the least it deserves. We

know that something out of the ordinary must have happened during Tara

Reade’s spell at Biden’s office, otherwise she wouldn’t have disappeared

at short notice. If the reason wasn’t the one she claims it was, which

one was it? To declare without end that no one among Biden’s staff was

aware of anything related to this is laughable and no better than what

we are used to hearing from Trump circles. By not offering its own

version of the story, the Biden camp sends one message only: “Please,

please, let us move on to other things!” Hardly satisfying for a party

that wants us to believe that it can do so much better for America than

the vicious clown in office now.

In a New York Times piece titled “I believe Tara Reade. I’m Voting for

Joe Biden Anyway”, Linda Hirshman conveyed a simple message: Like it or

not, Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee, he is better than Donald

Trump, and so we have no choice but vote for him, no matter what

happened to Tara Reade. I think there are good reasons to disagree with

this conclusion, but at least it is honest and coherent. Yet, it doesn’t

resolve what might be the most disturbing political aspect of this sad

affair, namely the Democratic Party’s apparent belief that their best

shot at replacing the most ludicrous president in U.S. history is to

field a 77-year old white Washington veteran with – to say the least – a

dubious relationship with both women and the truth. Really? This is the

best you can do? In that case, no matter the outcome of the next

presidential elections, you have already lost.