I don’t dislike Joe Biden. He is reportedly a very decent man. I remember very fondly his friendship with Obama. Remember those memes about their friendship? Those memes were fun! If he wins the primary, I will vote for him, because I would vote for anyone over Trump.
But I hope he doesn’t win the primary.
Because it is possible to think that people are good people, and still think those people are not the best candidate for President. And I don’t think Joe Biden is, because I don’t think the best alternative to Trump is another 70-something white man who has an unpleasant history with women.
It is generally very difficult to beat an incumbent. One way to mobilize people to get out and vote against Trump is to appeal to those who find him morally egregious. There are a lot of critiques that can be leveled against Trump in that regard, but some of the most notable ones are Trump’s treatment of women. He’s bragged about grabbing women by the pussy. Twenty-three women have accused Trump of sexual assault. After Dr. Christine Blasley Ford came forward to talk about how Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her, Trump declared it “a scary time for young men.” In the early days of his campaign, before we realized how gross he’d be all the time, Trump made headlines discussing how Megyn Kelly had “blood coming out of her wherever.” He felt that way because she asked him to explain whether he thought calling women “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals” was appropriate presidential behavior.
No wonder women have been fleeing the Republican party under Trump. Right now only 25 percent of American women identify as Republicans, and that’s important, because women vote in higher numbers than men (9.9 million more women than men voted in 2016). When men talk about electability, women are the ones doing the electing. Politico reports that many women have shifted from the Republican party because they’re appalled by Trump on a personal level. They describe him as being, for instance, “a misogynistic jerk.”
As former Trump advisor Steve Bannon explained: “The Republican college-educated woman is done. They’re gone. They were going anyway at some point in time. Trump triggers them.”
Trump is a repellent man—obviously so in his interactions with women. It should be very easy to find a candidate (perhaps one of the six women running) who does not behave around women in a way remotely similar to Trump.
But any time Joe Biden tries to position himself as being better than Trump in that regard, rest assured you’re going to hear from Republicans about women Biden touched without their consent. And there will not be a shortage of those. Will it be an equitable comparison? I personally don’t think so, because I don’t think there’s much that compares with sending an associate to intimidate a woman you had an affair with, and bragging about sexual assault. But brace yourself to watch videos of women cringing while Joe Biden massages their shoulders approximately a hundred times.
Trump can basically dismiss some of his more heinous behavior by saying, “Yeah, I like to grab women, so does Joe. See? It’s normal.” Banking that this might pacify some older white men who dislike changing times ignores the fact that women outvote men by a considerable margin.
And if that weren’t troubling enough, his treatment of Anita Hill should be on everyone’s mind, especially so soon after the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation. Back in 1991, Biden presided over the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Judge Clarence Thomas’s conduct toward Anita Hill when he was her supervisor. Anita Hill accused him of sexual harassment. She explained that he spoke about "such matters as women having sex with animals and films showing group sex or rape scenes … On several occasions, Thomas told me graphically of his own sexual prowess.”
During that time, there were some aspects of the hearings that many people found lacking. Hill compared the hearings to a “trial that lacked all of the protections of a trial.” The committee she was facing was entirely white and male. A former associate was allowed to speak out about her and say she suffered from “romantic delusions.” (This notion, when you look at Clarence Thomas, always seems to be a bit of a reach.) No additional witnesses who could corroborate Anita Hill’s account were called to testify by Biden. He did not stop Republicans from issuing threats about how they were going to destroy her.
The spectacle of a dignified, calm woman pitted against a potential Supreme Court justice who was apoplectic with anger over her claims that he’d behaved badly (Thomas called the proceedings “a high-tech lynching”) is one that is too familiar with us today. It’s impossible to dismiss it as a relic of the past when something very similar happened to Dr. Blasey Ford just last year. I desperately want a candidate—and I think I am not alone in this—who understands in his heart that a woman’s sexual trauma is as important as a man’s promotion.
And, while Biden may be very pleasant in many of his dealings, I’m not sure he does. Biden, 76, has claimed that, “If you go back and look at what I said and didn’t say, I don’t think I treated her badly.”
Hill does not agree, claiming in 2017: “I still don’t think [Biden’s response] takes ownership of his role in what happened.”
Before Biden began his campaign he called Anita Hill to apologize. She responded: “I cannot be satisfied by simply saying I’m sorry for what happened to you. I will be satisfied when I know there is real change and real accountability and real purpose.”
If Democrats are going to position ourselves as the party that cares about women—and I think it would be a good idea both morally and politically—then you can’t have a man leading it who has this much troubled history with women.
