Joe Biden, Senator from Citibank (oops, DELAWARE), to Run for President

Well I mean they only started having primaries in like the 1960s, right? And they managed to nominate candidates for a couple hundred years.

Once the pandemic starts to subside in the fall as the curve flattens further

I believe there will be a second surge in September-October if not slightly earlier (August?).

The wider media apparatus that basically allowed him to sleepwalk to the nomination after preemptively crowning him nominee after only 3 state primaries and is now widely ignoring the deepening of these sexual misconduct allegations will also laser in on him in from an adversarial standpoint like they did with Clinton back in Fall of 2016 when coverage on a purported "scandal" of the candidate becomes most profitable to deploy, deep into the primary.

Journalists hated Hillary Clinton in a deeply personal way (and she hated them right back). They like Joe Biden.

Well I mean they only started having primaries in like the 1960s, right? And they managed to nominate candidates for a couple hundred years.

So what you're saying is, the Democratic Party should go back to the "smoke-filled room" model, and (by implication) you think a morally and ethically acceptable candidate is more likely to emerge from a return to that process?

give it to the candidate with the second most delegates

jk that isn't fair either, much as i would like it.

i think the biden delegates can rally around someone of their choosing. that's how it works.

Show your work. Walk through the process.

my more considered response is that it's not up to me (or anyone else here) to do that, but that i'm very confident it can be done. there are lots of very intelligent people out there. this is not impossible. it's not our job to come up with the process on a messageboard. for people like us, our job is to make sure that political leadership understands that a bunch of people don't want to vote for an assaulter. l

here is my less considered response.

as i said recently, if it were up to ME, i would just mail ballots out to everyone who voted in democratic primaries this year and last time around. any previous 2020 candidate, from beto to now, could be on the ballot (or not - they could opt out). since it's me doing it and i don't have to be realistic, i would also make it ranked choice, and it would be a national primary, rather than state by state with delegates.

let's take some Q&A

If Biden drops out, then what? amazing things
Who steps up to contest for the nomination? the next president of the united states
How does that process work? well it's complicated
How do candidates (either folks re-entering the nomination race, or new folks) campaign? they don't. since these goddamn elections never end, they already campaigned the last several months, we're all already exhausted from hearing about these people so much for the last year, and i know who john hickenlooper is.
How are they chosen, with many primaries already over and others cancelled? do-over. "do-over?!?!" yeah, do-over. it's unprecedented, but it's a better option than Biden as a nominee, at this point.
Are all of Biden's delegates re-assigned to his former rivals, proportionally? no

in general though, to unperson i would suggest letting joe biden and the DNC do the hard work of defending biden and arguing that it's not possible to nominate anyone else 6 months before an election (i wrote the previous sentence in a way encouraged to make people from other countries vomit in disbelief). everyone else who cares should be doing the hard work of saying that biden isn't acceptable

To add a thought, KM and unperson, you would still leave Biden on this ranked ballot, right?

well, not if he's withdrawing from the race, which is what he should be doing

if they really think there is nothing to these charges they can launch their own investigation, or turn to a neutral body, or something of that kind. he should be able to defend himself if he really thinks he's innocent.

i don't know the process. but ignorning this isn't going to work.

So what you're saying is, the Democratic Party should go back to the "smoke-filled room" model, and (by implication) you think a morally and ethically acceptable candidate is more likely to emerge from a return to that process?

Well I think the candidate is less likely to be a sexual assaulter than this one, yes.

I mention it because you can bet most voters -- Dem or otherwise-- doesn't know Reade or the allegations at all for obvious reasons. Imagine a Biden supporter reeling after learning Biden's withdrawing. There would have be to some kind of media saturation to remind voters what's at stake.

I mean presumably there are contingency plans in place, right? If Biden got hit by a bus presumably there's some kind of plan to choose the new candidate?

also, in my dreamland where anyone actually holds Biden accountable for his actions, here is my advice for bernie supporters: you may be tempted to argue that the nomination should go to the candidate with the second most delegates. and that's a defensible position! but i think it would actually be better for bernie to be on a ballot with a host of other candidates - his election plan was based on the trump model of being the candidate with the most support in a crowded field, with a plurality but not a majority of support within the democratic party. so let him fight it out again, and get the most votes again. he'll have more legitimacy as a candidate that way and ultimately come out stronger.

To add a thought, KM and unperson, you would still leave Biden on this ranked ballot, right?

none of this is happening anyway, but if it did, it would be because biden dropped out of the race out of some fit of "having a conscience", so i don't think he'd be on there.

Biden's base of support, I'll agree, tends to be weak...but it's stronger than Clinton's, especially among black voters.

I realize we're shooting shit on a message board, but to reach any critical mass about Biden's fate we'd have to:

(a) hear from more men and women to whom Reade allegedly confided the news;

(b) learn about other allegations

i welcome any more information about it that comes to light, but i don't understand what else needs to come out. if she's lying about this, it was very mean of her to tell her mom and friends about it, to the extent where her mom called into larry king in the 90s and mentioned it. the larry king thing is such a bizarre piece of evidence to come to light, but...it's pretty damning

why do we need more allegations? with kavanaugh there was only one truly strong allegation, the others ended up fizzling out.

Well, the brother changed his story after Nathan Robinson talked to him. I'm not saying the confidants were lying, but as I said on Monday as a reporter it bothers me instinctively that we didn't learn what they thought of Reade's initial less damning allegations.

i welcome any more information about it that comes to light, but i don't understand what else needs to come out. if she's lying about this, it was very mean of her to tell her mom and friends about it, to the extent where her mom called into larry king in the 90s and mentioned it. the larry king thing is such a bizarre piece of evidence to come to light, but...it's pretty damning

― let me be your friend on the other end! (Karl Malone), Wednesday, April 29, 2020 3:36 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

why do we need more allegations? with kavanaugh there was only one truly strong allegation, the others ended up fizzling out.

― treeship., Wednesday, April 29, 2020 3:38 PM (one minute ago)

I mean, we're also in the middle of a pandemic when this news has been impossible to break through.

the others ended up fizzling out.

― treeship., Wednesday, April 29, 2020 3:38 PM (two minutes ago)

You found them less credible?

well, i'm going to assume that if reade was willing to appear on a podcast to talk about it and she has multiple people stepping up to back her up, we'll be learning more about the story in the coming weeks. if the story has enough momentum that even don lemon feels compelled to talk about it, then i'm sure 60 minutes or whatever is trying to book reade for an exclusive tell-all etc etc

the avenatti ones? yeah xp

but again, though - i don't understand why the evidence that's already there isn't enough. why would she tell family and friends about it back then, multiple times? the only thing i can think of is if she were fired for being a bad employee, or whatever, and she was too embarrassed to admit that so she made up a cover story that biden assaulted her? but maaaaaaan, come on. plus there's that whole thing about "believe the victims", seems important.

well that's the thing. this is the democrats' standard--they need to stand by it.

exactly! they talked a good game during the Kavanaugh hearings. let's see who actually believed what they were saying.

i just don't think they can be taken seriously if they don't at least seriously investigate this

i'm getting a little too soap-boxy again, sorry. i recognize that this is a complicated situation. i'm just kind of stunned that it hasn't blown up more. i guess i shouldn't be. i kind of cynically expect the republicans to make hay, too, eventually, although of course they have the whole history of being the party that endorses sex offenders so

the right is talking about this a lot as an example of left wing hypocrisy!

are they? i have been trying to avoid hate-watching/listening to rightwing media recently

i mean, he should have a chance to defend himself if he really thinks this is a false accusation. he could release internal records from that time. many things. but the standard is, "victims should be heard and have their testimony taken seriously." so they have to do that at least and not just say they "trust" joe.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/the-hypocrisy-on-tara-reade-is-a-national-disgrace/

they're honestly right. they need to apply the same standards to biden as they do to right wingers.

She also submitted to an NRO interview.

No one has asked Biden about this yet?

haha NRO speaking of hypocrisy I'm not going to give her them the hits by linking to their Kavenaugh articles

Biden needs to drop out. continuing is immoral imo

Biden's base of support, I'll agree, tends to be weak...but it's stronger than Clinton's, especially among black voters.

citation needed

Biden wasn't doing remarkably well with black voters until the Clyburn endorsement and media narrative shift of South Carolina.

https://www.thecut.com/2019/03/an-awkward-kiss-changed-how-i-saw-joe-biden.html

At this point, it doesn't matter if some operatives of the extreme right are orchestrating this, because the only winning move for Biden now would be proving Reade is a fraud and a liar who is being paid handsomely to take him down. Or he has to admit he assaulted her, apologize deeply and sincerely, show contrition and somehow turn it into a "Checkers speech" that neutralizes the anger of women survivors. iow, he has no winning move. This isn't Burisma. The party's coalition can't hold together in the face of this.

The party needs him to do the admission of guilt, apology, contrition, and the stepping down. If Biden does this, I'll consider it a miracle of unusual size.

haha NRO speaking of hypocrisy I'm not going to give her them the hits by linking to their Kavenaugh articles

the NRO is saying that they don't think he did it, unless more evidence comes to light, but that dems should have given the same courtesy to kavanaugh

it has been very bleak seeing the Kavanaugh strategy play out with the Dems, with these respectable, supposedly feminist writers publishing pieces that don't say she's lying, but attack the process, the messengers, essentially push the narrative of "it's all too complicated and we can't know anything for sure and so you shouldn't feel bad about supporting Biden and ignoring this story." Leaving their readers to rave about Russian conspiracy theories in the comments section.

This was a good response to that:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/metoo-is-more-important-than-joe-biden.html

Apparently Mother Jones published and subsequently deleted a post by Kevin Drum proposing that maybe Biden behaved slightly inappropriately toward Reade and she turned this into a delusion that he assaulted her, using an article by the Krassenstein brothers as supporting evidence.

The Internets don't ever forget, Kevin.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200429172519/https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/

Mother Jones HQ should collapse into a massive sinkhole

it's like a 500 word version of tombot's earlier posts, good god

This is one of the better pieces I've read, and it mentions what I said a couple hours ago about Reade's brother and Nathan Robinson (Reade's brother changed his story) and it ends with:

Dealing with this sort of accusation, in regard to political as opposed to legal consequences, is tricky. If Biden were merely one of several possible candidates for the Democratic nomination, I think it would be appropriate to take it into account in deciding whether to support him.

This goes back to the point people made constantly about Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination hearing. Standards for evaluating evidence in the context of a job interview should be completely different than standards for evaluating evidence in a legal proceeding, let alone in a criminal trial. (To be clear, I think the odds that Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations against Kavanaugh are true are vastly higher than the odds that Reade’s allegations against Biden are true). Nobody has a presumptive right to be on the Supreme Court or to become president of the United States. If you think there’s, say, a 5% chance that Reade’s sexual assault allegation is true, it’s perfectly appropriate to take that imputed probability into account at the margin, when deciding whether to support Biden against other Democratic candidates.

But once Biden is the presumptive Democratic nominee, then the calculus changes completely. It then becomes: should a 5% chance that this allegation is true lead to any attempt to keep Biden from getting the nomination? For reasons that are too obvious to belabor, the answer to that question is “no.” (For reasons that are even more obvious, the truth or falsity of this allegation is completely irrelevant to the question of whether one ought to vote for Biden instead of Trump)

I hate the last sentence, though.

What's more interesting, the percentage we believe something is true or the calculus we use to determine the percentage? Great fucking parlor game.

Sarah Jones making a lot of sense in NYMag.