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Is Bernie Sanders Behind The #MeToo Complaint Against Joe Biden?

Is Bernie Sanders Behind The #MeToo Complaint Against Joe Biden?

There was always something fishy about the #MeToo complaint against Joe Biden. Putting hands on Lucy Flores’ shoulders and smooching the back of her head is in no way sexual. Even Flores admitted that.

Nonetheless, Flores gave a dramatic rendition of the distress it caused her. “I just froze,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do. Because again the only thing that you’re processing is that there is a very powerful man standing next to you … and you just don’t know how to respond.”

What doesn’t add up? Everything.

Flores was not a preadolescent nymph but rather the 2014 Democratic nominee for Nevada lieutenant governor. If a kiss on the back of her head made her freeze, how would she have responded to a genuine crisis, say, a terrorist attack? She was about to go on stage, so you’d think she had other things on her mind. Then-Vice President Biden was doing her an enormous favor bestowing his prestige on her candidacy. And if this bothered her so much, why did she wait five years to “come forward”?

The most plausible answer is that this stunt isn’t about Biden but about helping Bernie Sanders. Lo and behold, polls show Biden leading Sanders among Democratic voters — as Sanders faces his own accusations of disrespecting women.

Some backstory: When Flores lost the 2014 election by a landslide, establishment Democrats stopped promoting her. (Two years later, she lost a primary run for Congress.) In 2016, she joined the Sanders campaign, becoming a surrogate. She also joined the board of Our Revolution, an advocacy group backing Sanders.

Biden advisers share the hunch that the Sanders campaign is behind her charges, according to Mike Allen of Axios. And a former Sanders staffer, Tezlyn Figaro, just called Flores a “fraud” on Fox News.

We expect that, in the future, Biden will desist from getting so affectionate with women and will lose the grandfatherly touch. A politician should not do unto women that which he would not do unto men.

But let’s look at Sanders’ lamentable record on women. Women who worked on the 2016 campaign complain that they were made subservient to the boy geniuses. And there was that unforgettable moment when the Bernie bros hurled the C-word at Democratic women running the Nevada State Democratic Convention. Sanders responded to the use of that vilest of words against women with the mildest of hand slaps. Then he blamed both sides. (The official statement has been removed from his website.)

Because everyone is delving into Biden’s beliefs of decades ago, consider Bernie’s. In 1969, he opined that sexual maladjustment was linked to breast cancer. “You might very well be the cause of cancer,” he wrote with his trademark air of authority. Even back then, mainstream science rejected theories that psychological factors caused cancer.

Sanders also found fault with mothers unhappy that their 16-year-old daughters spent a night out with their boyfriends. “Are you concerned about HER happiness,” he wrote, “or about your ‘reputation’ in the community?” In this worldview, not putting out is an emblem of female repression.

Zoom to 2019. Sanders says he believes Lucy Flores, as do a number of other opportunistic Democrats. Thing is, we all believe Flores’ account of what Biden did. Videos show Biden hugging, kissing and rubbing shoulders of numerous women over the years.

What we can’t believe is Flores’ claim that she is bringing this up now to fix a grievous wrong done her — rather than an innocent gesture by a national politician who went out of his way to help her campaign. That Sanders and his people are fueling these petty attacks is something we can believe.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com.To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Joe Biden Posts Video Response To Charges He Touched Women ‘Inappropriately’

Joe Biden Posts Video Response To Charges He Touched Women ‘Inappropriately’

Former Vice President Joe Biden — widely believed to be on the verge of announcing his bid for the 2020 Democratic nomination —posted a video on Twitter Wednesday responding to recent reports from women who say he has inappropriately touched them in the past.

The women have said that his attempts to make physical contact and show affection made them uncomfortable and were inappropriate. One woman, Lucy Flores, said he grabbed her shoulders from behind and kissed the back of her head unexpectedly. Another, Caitlyn Caruso, said Biden put his hand on her even as she “squirmed” and he hugged her “a little bit too long.” D.J. Hill described him sliding his hand down her back, making her “very uncomfortable.”

In his video, Biden appeared to try to downplay the claims made against him, saying that he makes “gestures of support and encouragement” to “women and some men.” He admitted that his actions have made people uncomfortable but said that as a politician he’s always tried to make a “human connection” with other people.

He also attributed the complaints against him to the fact that “social norms are changing.” While he pledged to be “more mindful and more respectful of people’s personal space,” his explanation for his behavior seemed to try to excuse it as being from another era. He could have simply admitted that he overstepped some boundaries and that it was inappropriate, but when politicians apologize, the temptation to make excuses is often irresistible.

Watch the video below:

Did Biden Brag About Groping Women Or Pay Off Porn Stars? No? OK

Did Biden Brag About Groping Women Or Pay Off Porn Stars? No? OK

 If you didn’t know Joe Biden was of Irish descent, you might think he was French, or Italian. The man exudes personal warmth. He touches people, leans in close, pats their shoulders, whispers in their ears, and plants unsolicited kisses. Upon women, that is.
To my knowledge, he doesn’t kiss men. That, he leaves to our Mediterranean brethren. But he hugs everybody.
I have a young dog rather like Biden. Aspen loves everybody and expects everybody to love him back. At the dog park, he races joyously up to total strangers, puts his paws on their shoulders—he’s a big boy, Aspen—and gives them sloppy kisses. Not everybody’s crazy about it, but unsolicited dog kisses come with the territory. Aspen is eighteen months old, still in the baseball glove-eating stage of life.
   
Joe Biden is 76, no longer a puppy. Indeed, I’m on record as saying he and Bernie Sanders are both too damned old to be president. Like Aspen, Biden too wants everybody to like him, and most do. Even Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in urging him to join “the straight-arm club,” of which she’s a member—“I just pretend you have a cold, and I have a cold”—adds that her grandchildren love him.
 
“He’s a very affectionate person,” Pelosi said. 
Not to Lucy Flores, however. Flores is the former Nevada state legislator and Bernie Sanders activist who wrote in The Cut accusing Biden of violating her by putting his hands on her shoulders and kissing the back of her head before she took the podium at a 2014 political rally. Flores was a candidate for Lt. Governor of Nevada, a race she lost badly.
“My brain couldn’t process what was happening,” she wrote. “I was embarrassed. I was shocked. I was confused. There is a Spanish saying, “tragame tierra,” it means, “earth, swallow me whole.”
So had the vice-president touched her impurely, as they used to ask in the confessional? No, he had not, Flores wrote. Then why are we talking about it at all? Because she felt diminished. “[H]e stopped treating me like a peer the moment he touched me. Even if his behavior wasn’t violent or sexual, it was demeaning and disrespectful.”
Flores later told Politico that she’d seen photos and videos of Biden behaving improperly. “When I started to see pictures of him behaving in the same way he did with me and with other women, it was very triggering,” she said. “I felt so much empathy for them…I had been in their shoes.”\
We’ll come back to the cant term “triggering.”
Biden emitted his sincerest non-apology apology. He confessed to being a very tactile politician, but added that “not once—never—did I believe I acted inappropriately. If it is suggested I did so, I will listen respectfully. But it was never my intention.”
What else could the man say?
Indeed, it appeared that Flores may have indulged in creative mind-reading. There’s a lot of that going around. After Stephanie Carter, the wife of former defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, kept seeing photos and videos of herself being hugged by Biden, she wrote that contrary to speculation, “the Joe Biden in my picture is a close friend helping someone get through a big day, for which I will always be grateful.”
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said that another photo of Biden smooching his 13 year-old daughter was entirely appropriate. “All three of my kids have known Joe their whole lives.” A twenty-something Washington Post columnist opined that Coons was raising his children wrong. 
Every Democratic woman I’ve spoken with agreed with Pelosi: hands off. But also with a Facebook friend who called Biden “an anachronism in this new age of paranoia. You can kiss the back of my head when I’m nervously taking deep breaths waiting to go on stage, Joe, and I’ll be nothing but grateful for the paternal vote of confidence. My father used to do the same thing when I was scared to dive off the high board.”
Which brings us back to “triggering,” and the Democrats’ growing image as the persnickety party; the party of busybodies, prigs and lifestyle commissars. The party that can’t keep its eye on the ball.
For that, I turn to CNN Republican commentator, Ana Navarro-Cárdenas. Biden should keep his hands to himself, she wrote. “But pls get back to me when +15 women say he sexually harassed them, or he boasts of grabbing a woman’s kitty-cat, or he pays hush-money to a stripper who reminds him of his daughter.
“I’ll wait.”
IMAGE: Vice President Joe Biden announces he will not seek the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination during an appearance with his wife Jill (R) in Rose Garden of the White House in Washington October 21, 2015. REUTERS/Carlos Barria