Democrats and Tara Reade, Biden and the #MeToo trap

Christine Blasey Ford and Tara Reade have one thing in common: Intercept reporter Ryan Grim was pivotal in publicizing their stories.

It was Grim who helped put Reade, the former Senate aide who has accused Joe Biden of sexual assault and harassment, on the public radar. In March, Grim raised questions about why a legal fund devoted to helping #MeToo victims declined to take her case.

Since then, commentators on both sides have compared Reade to Blasey Ford, usually to accuse mainstream Democrats of hypocrisy. Democrats, the argument goes, supported a movement whose slogan is “Believe women,” and yet many are unconvinced by this woman.

But Democrats aren’t being asked to hold themselves to the same standard they apply to others. They’d never demand that their political opponents act on a story with as many ambiguities as Reade’s.

To be clear, the timing of Reade’s charges doesn’t mean they’re untrue. If Biden assaulted her, it’s understandable she’d want to destroy him politically. Her story about that assault has changed, but that isn’t unusual in survivors.

Reade’s story about filing a sexual harassment complaint has also changed, in ways less explicable by trauma. On March 18, she tweeted, “When I filed a complaint against Joe Biden for sexual harassment and more I was fired in ’93.” But The Associated Press reported in 2019 that she said she went into the office, “But then I chickened out.” According to the AP, she now clarifies that she chickened out about reporting her full experience but did fill out an “intake form.”

This doesn’t mean an assault didn’t happen. Reade’s former neighbor Lynda LaCasse recently remembered that Reade told her the story in 1995 or 1996. Others have as well but without going on the record by name. (Her brother has said likewise, but his recounting of the story has changed.)

Still, right now it’s hard to compare Blasey Ford’s case with Reade’s. Blasey Ford had four sworn affidavits from people whom she’d told that she’d been assaulted, as well as therapist’s notes and the results from a polygraph. She testified, and was cross-examined, under oath. The Democratic plea, at the time, was for a thorough FBI investigation.

Initially, Democrats were credulous when the now-disgraced lawyer Michael Avenatti introduced another accuser, Julie Swetnick, but many eventually realized her story didn’t hold up. This showed that “believe women” is best taken as a starting point, not a conclusion.

Now feminists are caught in a trap.

In The Washington Post, Lyz Lenz writes that Democrats should “insist that Biden step aside,” arguing that no investigation could be enough to redeem him. But overruling voting results is a serious thing. To attempt it on the basis of a case with this many holes would be a slap in the face to those who chose Biden.

On Friday, the website Law & Crime reported that a niece of Christine O’Donnell, a former Republican Senate candidate in Delaware, said that Biden commented on her breasts at a 2008 Gridiron Club dinner, when she was 14. Several people said they were told about this at the time, but Biden wasn’t at the dinner. O’Donnell then said it might have happened at the Gridiron dinner in 2007, but Biden wasn’t there either. That’s how easily #MeToo can be misused as a political weapon.

Whatever happens next, the movement’s credibility will suffer. The original #MeToo stories were meticulously documented. Now it may become a way to handicap one political faction in the middle of a partisan freefor-all.