The Berners would rather see Trump win than allow Biden to run unblemished. To hear it from them (along with the #BelieveAllWomen crowd), Tara Reade‘s inconsistent, highly questionable sexual assault accusation is straight from the King James Bible. Despite the fact that it’s full of holes and almost certainly bullshit. Please consider this 4.29 USA Today piece by former federal prosecutor Thomas J. Stern. Read it, give it some thought, take two steps back.
Posted on Facebook by Sasha Stone:
1. As you all already know I’ve been sounding the alarm against the hysteria of the #MeToo movement for a while now. I think it was a necessary over-correction to a long history of women being disregarded and not listened to. But I also think it was more of an irrational reaction to Trump’s election. We couldn’t do anything about Trump so we went after people we could destroy. Currently on the scrap heap are a lot of people, some who deserved it (Harvey Weinstein) AND some who didn’t (Chris Matthews, et. al.). It went way too far, and now has become weaponized. At this point, I think it’s gone so far that we’re about to see a pendulum shift way back in the other direction, where every accusation is shot down.
2. We have to admit on the left that we didn’t want Kavanaugh on the court. Period. We would have done anything to stop him. I myself believed and still believe that Christine Blasey Ford was telling the truth that she was not-quite-raped. I can’t say, and no one can say, that Kavanaugh was the guy. Also, I was never comfortable with a 30-year-old charge being enough to completely wreck someone’s reputation. But I’ll come clean and say I was caught up in it because I didn’t want him on the court. So I went along with it.
3. The Tara Reade case has made me reflect a lot on that case and now I feel like we did not follow the rule of law, innocent until proven guilty. And I went along with character assassination. Now I feel like there has to be a healthy balance of women who feel like they CAN report sex crimes and be listened to and believed rather than making Dustin Hoffman a sex offender 40 years later for patting women on the rear end on the set.
4. THAT SAID, these cases are not the same.
a) Blasey Ford has never changed her story — a story of trauma that she could not shake. This isn’t true of Tara Reade who has a long history of praising Biden and her work for him and only brought up the harassment story in 2019 when she joined a chorus of women complaining about him (they were trying to damage Biden so Bernie could get the nomination).
b) There was another person in the room with Ford and Kavanaugh — why would she add a witness if she had been lying? Reade has no witnesses, of course.
c) Ford wrote a letter to Dianne Feinstein and asked that it not be made public. She was a reluctant witness. By contrast, Reade has turned this into fifteen minutes of fame. She is on Twitter non-stop and especially enjoying attention from celebrities like John Cusack and Susan Sarandon.
d) Even though imperfect, Kavanaugh did have a defense. And a jury of sorts. Biden has none of this — he is on trial by the media, the Trump supporters and especially the Berners.
The bottom line for me is this: I will admit that how we treated Kavanaugh was a mistake and that it’s understandable the right would charge us with hypocrisy. I still think Ford was absolutely telling the truth. I don’t think for one second that Reade is.
It’s fair for people on the right to call us out for this. But two wrongs don’t make a right.
