Biden’s silence frustrates party base
Sex assault claim still looms as Democrats weigh election fallout
For more than three weeks, progressive activists and women’s rights advocates have debated how to handle a sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden.
The conversations weren’t easy: Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, faces one allegation; his opponent, President Donald Trump, has faced at least a dozen.
Finally, several of the women’s groups prepared a public letter that praised Biden’s work as an “outspoken champion for survivors of sexual violence” but pushed him to address the allegation from Tara Reade, a former aide who worked in Biden’s Senate office in the early 1990s.
“Vice President Biden has the opportunity, right now, to model how to take serious allegations seriously,” the draft letter said. “The weight of our expectations matches the magnitude of the office he seeks.”
According to people involved in the discussions, the group put the letter on hold as it began pressuring Biden advisers to push the candidate to make a statement himself before the end
of April, which is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Along with liberal organizers, they urged him to acknowledge the need for systemic change around issues of sexism and assault.
Nearly two weeks later, Biden and his campaign have yet to make that statement, and the advocates haven’t released their letter. The Biden campaign has said little publicly beyond saying that women deserve to be heard and insisting that the allegation isn’t true; privately, Biden advisers have circulated talking points urging supporters to deny that the incident occurred.
As two more women have come forward to corroborate part of Reade’s allegation, the Biden campaign is facing attacks from the right and increasing pressure from the left to address the issue. And liberal activists find themselves in a tense standoff with a candidate they want to support but who they say has made little attempt to show leadership on an issue that resonates deeply with their party’s base.
“It’s difficult for survivors to see that a woman who has more corroborating sources than most survivors have in similar situations is being tossed aside and actively being weaponized by cynical political actors,” said Shaunna Thomas, a founder of Ultra-Violet, a women’s rights advocacy group involved in the effort to push the campaign. “It would be an incredible moment of leadership for Joe Biden to show up.”
Since Reade came forward in March, saying Biden reached under her dress and molested her in a Senate building in 1993, his aides and advisers have denied the accusation. The team has been unconcerned about any political blowback, according to people who have spoken with the campaign.
Top Biden aides are telling allies they don’t see the allegation resonating with voters. They’re confident the allegation won’t shake voters’ perceptions of Biden’s character as a devoted father and husband, with family ties forged through deep tragedies. They also believe that voters will view the allegation with great skepticism.
A Biden campaign spokesman declined to comment for this article Wednesday. A Biden adviser said the campaign was talking to activists and that Biden considered their views important.
The Biden campaign talking points instruct supporters to describe the candidate as a “fierce advocate for women” who never has faced any “complaint, allegation, hint or rumor of any impropriety or inappropriate conduct.” The talking points also inaccurately suggested that an investigation by the New York Times this month found that “this incident did not happen.”
In a statement Wednesday, the Times noted the investigation “made no conclusion either way.”
In recent months, Biden has taken steps that appear to show he understands how a commitment to representation and equity might resonate with women, who make up the majority of Democratic voters. He has pledged to pick a woman as a running mate and nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court.
Yet as he seeks to unite the Democratic Party after the primaries and pivot to a general election against Trump, Reade’s allegation remains a subject of intense discussion in the political world.
“Joe Biden himself needs to respond directly,” said Yvette Simpson, the chief executive of Democracy for America, a progressive advocacy organization, which plans to back the Democratic nominee. “While it is absolutely essential that we defeat Donald Trump in November, trying to manage the response through women surrogates and emailed talking points doesn’t cut it in 2020 — especially if Democrats want to continue to be the party that values, supports, elevates, hears and believes women.”
Among Republicans, the years of allegations against Trump have inflicted little damage with his base.
He has been accused of sexual assault and misconduct by more than a dozen women, who have described behavior that went far beyond the allegation against Biden. He repeatedly has denigrated women over their appearance and intellect. The “Access Hollywood’’ tape, in which he boasted about grabbing women’s genitals, was released just weeks before his victory in the 2016 election.
As for the allegation against Biden, it has caused top female allies — including potential vice presidential prospects such as Stacey Abrams of Georgia and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota — to face questioning about whether they stand with Biden after the allegation.
Privately, some female Democrats are growing frustrated with being put in the position of answering for Biden when he has remained silent.
Many have publicly defended him, including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who helped lead the effort to push former Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota to resign over sexual harassment accusations in 2017.
“I stand by Vice President Biden,” Gillibrand said on a conference call, adding there needed to be “space for all women to come forward to speak their truth, to be heard.”
Last year, Reade was one of eight women who came forward to say Biden had kissed, hugged or touched them in ways that made them feel uncomfortable, but she didn’t raise the assault allegation then.
In an interview Tuesday, Reade described herself as disappointed with the response from the Biden campaign, saying it hadn’t contacted her. Reade backed Sanders in the primary race and said she doesn’t plan to vote in the general election.
She said politics weren’t the reason she came forward with her allegation, saying she didn’t want to be used by the Trump campaign.
“Sexual assault and sexual harassment in the workplace is a huge gender, institutionalized problem in our country, and the fact that they are not addressing my allegations head-on and dealing with the corroborating evidence is simply a testimony to the hypocrisy,” she said. “There is no partisanship with sexual assault and harassment. It is an equal opportunity offender.”