Joe Biden’s #MeToo moment – WSJ

The charge against the alleged Democratic presidential candidate comes from Tara Reade, a former Senate employee for Mr Biden. In 1993, she said, then-Sen. Biden pinned her to a wall, put his hand under her skirt, and digitally penetrated her. Sunday on

New York Times

posted an article quoting a friend who said Ms Reade told him about the incident right after it allegedly happened. He also cited his brother and another friend who said she had told them over the years. The friends were anonymous.

Mr. Biden denies the accusation, unequivocally. But here’s the complication. Mr. Biden has long held the view that women should be believed in sexual assault cases. Except, apparently, for Mrs. Reade.

Mr. Biden has a long and convoluted history here. When Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexually harassing her, Mr Biden, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, insisted she should present her case publicly so Mr Thomas could respond to the charges. In 1994, for their book “Strange Justice”, he told Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson that he had acted “with fairness to Thomas, which he did not deserve in retrospect”, and he then apologized to Mrs. Hill. Now he wants the standard of fairness for himself.

Mr Biden has long presented himself as a champion for victims of abuse and harassment, saying his proudest legislative achievement was the 1994 Violence Against Women Act. As vice president, he appointed the White House’s first adviser on violence against women and was the lead man in the Obama administration’s efforts to change “campus culture” towards sexual assault and harassment. This turned out to mean throwing out the protections of the accused students and allowing the minimum standard of proof to find guilty.

After Mr. Biden left office, Brett Kavanaugh,

Donald trumpThe Supreme Court candidate has been accused by Christine Blasey Ford of sexually assaulting her while they were both in high school. Mr. Biden spoke generally at the time about what kind of case he believed involved a public figure.

“For a woman to come into the limelight, nationally,” he told reporters, “you have to start with the presumption that at least the essence of what she is talking about is real whether or not she forgets facts, whether or not they have gotten worse or better over time, again, except for now.

The indictment against Mr. Biden also exposed double standards in the media. When Mr. Kavanaugh was the target, for example, The New York Times reported on Julie Swetnick’s accusations – including that she saw Mr. Kavanaugh at high school parties where women were “gang raped” – the same day she made them. These were smears supported by no evidence. There has been much less media appetite to report Ms Reade’s claims.

Times editor Dean Baquet waited 19 days to report his allegation and his own columnist asked him why Mr. Kavanaugh had been treated any differently. His response: “So I thought in [Ms. Reade’s] case, if The New York Times wanted to present this to readers, we had to present it with a bit of reporting and perspective. Kavanaugh was in a very different situation. It was a living, continuing story that had become the country’s greatest political story. It was just a different news judgment moment. It was sure.

We said at the time that we didn’t know if Ms. Blasey Ford was telling the truth, and we don’t know if Ms. Reade is now. When women make serious accusations, they deserve to be taken seriously, but that shouldn’t mean that an accused man has to lie. The correct way to proceed is to refuse to pass judgment and to examine the allegations and supporting evidence. In the case of Ms. Blasey Ford, no corroboration was provided.

This is all called due process and the presumption of innocence. These protections apply to everyone, including those who would deny them to others. Like Mr. Biden.