Context drives not only perception but the passion with which we hold that perception. Witness Tara Reade, who has accused presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden of sexual assault when she was an aide in his Senate office in 1993. In another time, Reade would be one more explosive chapter of the #MeToo movement. But as Eleanor Roosevelt might put it, this is no ordinary time.
Like an unwitting, latter-day Susannah, Reade has exposed the hypocrisy of the elders — and us. Many Republicans and conservatives would have you believe that Biden harassed her. President Donald J. Trump’s older sons would have you believe Biden’s done a lot more than that to others. Democrats and liberals would have you believe that the man they concede to be touchy-feely “Uncle Joe” was just that — an avuncular guy from another era who nonetheless championed women in his office and on the Senate floor. Everyone agrees in theory at least that Reade has a right to be heard, including the surprisingly magnanimous Biden. That is the American way. Everyone should recognize, too, that presumptions of guilt and innocence have become partisan issues. That is the American way, too.
For those looking for a thorough analysis of the case, I submit Lisa Desjardins and Dan Bush’s interviews for the “PBS NewsHour” with 74 former Biden staffers, who described quite a different culture in the Biden office in the 1990s than Reade did. The “NewsHour” camera also took us through the passageway that Senators use to shuttle from one building to another in the Capitol complex — a passageway where the alleged assault took place, a passageway patrolled by police and filled at any one time by congressmen, staffers and reporters, making it an unlikely location for a crime.
Yet what is more surprising than an attack in plain sight in an opportune moment? As for the former staffers, it’s also possible that Biden singled Reade out. Men are especially good at compartmentalizing. They can rape a stepchild and be the perfect father to a biological child. They can be pillars of the community and yet molest little boys in a train station — a story The Bronxville Review-Press Reporter covered extensively when I was a cub reporter there in the 1980s.
All of which is to say that everything Reade says happened is possible. The question is not is it possible, plausible or even probable. The question is who cares about it. Reade finds herself in a Monica Lewinsky moment. Yes, President Bill Clinton had sex with her, a much younger intern in his employ, abusing his power and then lying under oath to cover it up. But he was, well, Bill Clinton, too big to fail. Democrats and liberals, including Clinton’s wife, Secretary Hillary Clinton, didn’t want to know about it. Quite the opposite. Lewinsky might as well have been Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne.
The stakes once again are high, even higher in the age of the coronavirus. With 91,000 dead and counting, more than a million infections and the economy in Great Depression territory, the Dems and many independents do not want Trump for four more years. Many of them see Biden as a placeholder for a Pete Buttigieg or a Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate who is running hard to be Biden’s running mate, so the more exciting, younger candidates can get more seasoning. Many know the progressives won’t wait too long before making their move again.
So it’s Uncle Joe or bust. And Tara Reade, as far as many are concerned, can just save her stories for her tell-all.