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

As the story has now developed, I'll repeat my judgment that the party's coalition can't hold together in the face of this.

lol, it seems that now that the primaries are "over" and the offense in question is rape, people are implicitly acknowleging the DNC's behind-the-scene' power to intervene.

Along the same lines:

Biden wasn't doing remarkably well with black voters until the Clyburn endorsement and media narrative shift of South Carolina.
― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z),

I missed this -- you're right. I checked the polls.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, April 29, 2020 6:04 PM (fifty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I guess now that Biden's been revealed as a fucking creep at best, it's okay to acknowlege this, too. Alfred iirc you refused to accept this point in the aftermath of SC, but now that Biden's a rapist it seems ok to admit the electorate is suggestible and the machine is well-oiled

"endorsements don't really matter," "you're insulting the SC black electorate over the age of 45" etc.

the LGM piece alfred linked to is solid and basically otm. the stuff about nathan robinson is appalling but not really surprising -- i've always thought he was terrible.

he's really more of a sexual assaulter than a full-blown rapist, can we agree on that at least?

I guess now that Biden's been revealed as a fucking creep at best, it's okay to acknowlege this, too. Alfred iirc you refused to accept this point in the aftermath of SC, but now that Biden's a rapist it seems ok to admit the electorate is suggestible and the machine is well-oiled

I've acknowledged he's at best a creep, and I won't stop there. You can CTRL-F my responses.

lol burrito

tbf handsy Biden has long been a fantastic meme

xp I know, I'm not contending you ever had any fondess for him

I hate the last sentence, though.

The goalposts for "Vote like an adult" sure are shifting...

I've never used those words, nor have I quoted Dennis Perrin as a wit.

the LGM piece alfred linked to is solid and basically otm.

It reads like someone finding excuses to question Reade's credibility. He admits that it's possible that Reade is telling the truth but that "it seems far more probable...that she's lying." He assures us that he's weighed the evidence, but ultimately it comes down to a feeling. His "5% chance" is a made-up number that allows him to look like he's being rigorous but is small enough to be easily waved away.

Asking people to overlook differences over M4A to vote for Biden are in an entirely different category from asking people to overlook accusations of sexual assault which are increasingly backed by credible reports of contemporary conversations. I expect that the media will soon realize they have to give full coverage to this story. Then comes the furor.

the media will soon realize they have to give full coverage

Because if they don't have to, they won't?

OTM, Aimless.

AP acknowledged the story today

LGM is always the hottest garbage in slightly-left-of-center-town

their commenters are even worse, of course

PUTIN PUTIN OMG PUTIN

Because if they don't have to, they won't?

I think the 'serious' news media actually hates stories like this one. The accusation and denial don't suggest any easy resolution into the necessary facts and it isn't a story political correspondents are accustomed to deal with. Only a few reporters are likely to do all the hard leg work tracking down the relevant facts. If anything, it will begin to gain prominence via social media, which will trigger the news media's instinct to see it as a story about 'how could this affect the horse race?' That would be the tipping point into broader coverage.

The Washington Post editorial board is calling on Biden to directly address the allegations and open up records from his Senate career that may offer information.

That's good.

Not good: The WaPo tweeted this article, and a bunch of people in the replies seem to think it's evidence of the mainstream media getting played by Trump/Russia/etc. ("We're gonna wake up on Nov. 4 with Tara Reade as the new email server.")

PUTIN PUTIN OMG PUTIN

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Thursday, April 30, 2020 1:11 AM (six minutes ago)

at this point the number of leftists sneering "lol everything's about russia amirite lol" probably surpasses the number of ppl still making unreasonable claims about russian interference

LGM is always the hottest garbage in slightly-left-of-center-town

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z)

LGM's excellent on labor matters, constitutional questions, and a sober view of the Horse Race.

at this point the number of leftists sneering "lol everything's about russia amirite lol" probably surpasses the number of ppl still making unreasonable claims about russian interference

Spitballing but you didn't read the LGM link referred to, the comments, or the specific comment they chose to highlight.

why are you reading comments?

They pulled it into the post!

i did read it, and the putin remark is a couple of sentences in a long comment (they're also accurate, fwiw).

LGM’s horse race coverage is the kind of nebbish bourgeois trash you might reasonably expect from the middle aged white guy small-time law professors that write it

Good God, Chris Hayes is trending because MSNBC viewers are mad that he is taking the assault allegations seriously. I'm going to lose my mind.

trending on my feed for the last 12 hours!

really great that this country has put us in this situation where we have to vote for a braindead sex pest in order to save ourselves from a bigger sex pest whose incompetence and malice is actively killing people

Still more electable than a socialist amirite.

https://memecrunch.com/meme/3H5ER/what-a-country-yakov/image.jpg?w=400&c=1

sex pest sounds a little too John Leguizamo. "Rapist-American", please.

Chris Dodd on the VP committee. Biden coming straight with a fuck youuuuuuu

At this rate he's just gonna go ahead and pick fucking Ivanka as veep just to make sure he really rubs it in.

5-D chess! The lefty insurrectionists of the Democratic Party leadership have been softening up the people for Bernie all along, by a carefully-planned programme of gradually emphasising what a horrible piece of shit Joe Biden is, while there's still time to dump him.

Everyone who even vaguely floated the idea of 'pushing Biden to the left' should have to put in a shift in a carnival dunk tank.

At this rate he's just gonna go ahead and pick fucking Ivanka as veep

not wrong, ugh

I still think there's an outside shot of Mitt Romney

"I know I know I know Jack that I said I'd choose a woman but my old pal Mitt here represents the best of Ameri, represents a chance at uni... we're coming together Jack"

The first attempt failed, now it's up to the denizens of this thread to save America.

An Illinois woman inspired by pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory videos traveled to New York City on Wednesday with more than a dozen illegal knives and threatened to kill former Vice President Joe Biden, according to police and her own social media posts.

New York police officers arrested dancer Jessica Prim, 37, on Wednesday after she began to act strangely on a city pier. In a live video Prim posted on Facebook of her arrest. She ranted about saving children and claimed she had come to New York because of an internet conspiracy theory video about a “cabal” of pedophile Democrats.

“Have you guys heard about the kids?” a tearful Prim said as she was arrested. “OK, I’m not lying.”

Shortly before her arrest, Prim posted on Facebook that Hillary Clinton and Biden “need to be taken out.”

“Hillary Clinton and her assistant, Joe Biden and Tony Podesta need to be taken out in the name of Babylon!” Prim wrote. “I can’t be set free without them gone. Wake me up!!!!!”

At another point during her arrest, Prim said she believed Donald Trump was talking to her directly during his coronavirus press conferences. Prim is facing more than a dozen counts of criminal possession of a weapon over the knives, as well as a marijuana possession charge, according to the New York Daily News.

...

Prim appears to have gone to the pier because she was convinced it was near the U.S. Navy Hospital Ship Comfort, the hospital ship that was sent to New York City to help with the coronavirus pandemic. A faction of QAnon believers have become obsessed with the Comfort, convinced that it’s being used to rescue “mole children” abused by the “cabal.”

“I’m at the Comfort,” Prim said in the video.

In fact, Prim had mistaken the Comfort for the U.S.S. Intrepid, a former aircraft carrier that now serves as a museum.

In the name of Babylon?

shit like this...i mean clearly this woman is on shaky psychiatric ground and all this rubbish is just providing fodder for delusions, no?

Prim said she believed Donald Trump was talking to her directly during his coronavirus press conferences.

Very Helter Skelterish.

Biden getting whacked by a Q nutter would probably be a boon for the Democrats chances in November.

so I clicked on the #FireChrisHayes hashtag and like the first 12 results were people saying the hashtag was insane

good microcosm of how lefty twitter works really

That's not lefty twitter, that's how twitter works - every cancel hashtag, after a few hours, the top results are people saying it's dumb

i just realized Twitter is probably the closest thing to a "national conversation" that we'll ever get

Supposedly addressing this tomorrow morning.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8275593/Joe-Biden-break-silence-staffers-sexual-assault-claims.html

Not a show I want to watch but I will.

I would expect a denial. He'll say the allegation is 100% false, while not directly calling Reade a liar. For trimmings, he'll cite how well he gets along with women colleagues, and how much he respects women, and how wonderful the MeToo movement is, with a nod to how women are our mothers, sisters and wives. iow, almost certainly nothing to see here.

Anything resembling an admission, confession, or apology, would genuinely shock me and I'm getting too old to be shocked by much. But I do think that it is the only tiny escape hatch he has, because it would get in front of the story and move the conversation away from suspicions, investigations, denunciations, and such, to the possibility of healing, forgiveness and reconciliation. Or else give us a new nominee.

Another rock-solid take from Jacobin:

In 2016, Republicans scrambled to force Donald Trump out of the race over his sexual assault allegations. Today, the Democratic establishment is united in dismissing the same allegations against Joe Biden. It says a lot about the party of "believe women." https://t.co/dmJ2A32RIG

— Jacobin (@jacobinmag) April 30, 2020