UPDATE: Two more women have come forward to accuse Biden of inappropriate touching, making four in all.
By David Futrelle
It’s not exactly news that Joe Biden has a groping problem. We’ve all seen the videos, year after year, of Biden playing the role of creepy uncle at event after event, pawing weirdly at the shoulders, and hips, and sometimes even the chests of women and girls in his vicinity, fussing with their hair, perhaps leaning in to whisper something in their ears or even to kiss them on the back of their head.
But up until now we haven’t heard from any of the women in these videos — or anyone else treated in a similar way when the cameras weren’t near. No more. On Friday. as you no doubt know, Democratic politician and former Nevada State Assemblywoman Lucy Flores came forward with a story about how Biden, backstage at an campaign rally, had come up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.
“I felt him get closer to me from behind,” Flores wrote in an essay published in New York magazine’s The Cut on Friday.
He leaned further in and inhaled my hair. I was mortified. I thought to myself, “I didn’t wash my hair today and the vice-president of the United States is smelling it. And also, what in the actual fuck? Why is the vice-president of the United States smelling my hair?” He proceeded to plant a big slow kiss on the back of my head.
Flores didn’t appreciate Biden’s act of “friendliness.” She was, rather,
embarrassed … shocked [and] confused. …
The vice-president of the United States of America had just touched me in an intimate way reserved for close friends, family, or romantic partners — and I felt powerless to do anything about it. …
At that moment, she recalled, she wanted the earth to open up and swallow her whole.
Now that she has come forward with her story, she may be feeling the same way — because her straightforward and eminently believable account is being attacked as a vicious lie, a smear job by a political operative who was possibly paid for her service.
Her attackers, most of them Democrats, are sounding more than a little like the MAGA-heads who attacked Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser
Christine Blasey Ford. It’s not a good look for any Democrat.
Some are asking her the same question so many Kavanaugh defenders asked about Ford: why didn’t she come forward immediately? The clear implication is that unless a woman goes public immediately with her accusations there is something fishy about her story.
There are all sorts of perfectly legitimate and understandable reasons victims of sexual harassment or sexual assault don’t come forward immediately, or ever.
And Flores has already answered this question in her piece on The Cut: He was the fucking Vice President of the United States, who was there doing her a political favor. She didn’t think his actions quite rose “to the level of what most people consider sexual assault.” If she and Biden had been working in the same office, she could (and says she would) have gone to HR; there’s no mechanism to deal with this sort of thing in politics. And then there was the reaction she knew she would get from Biden supporters.
“For years,” she writes,
I feared my experience would be dismissed. Biden will be Biden. Boys will be boys. I worried about the doubts, the threats, the insults, and the minimization. “It’s not that big of a deal. He touched her, so what?” The immediate passing of judgement and the questioning of motives. “Why now? Why so long after? She just wants attention.” Or: “It’s politically motivated.”
In the few days since her story appeared online, every single one of these fears has come true.
What made her decide to come forward at last? She says it was the videos, the same videos we’ve all seen. She couldn’t stand to see a possible future president of the US doing to other women and girls what she says he did to her.
Of course, most of Flores’ critics either haven’t heard her explanation, or they have and have decided to dismiss it. For them, it’s all a big “smear,” a political “hit job,” probably on behalf of some nefarious villain.
For a lot of the critics, that villain is Bernie Sanders.
In fact, while Flores was a Bernie supporter in 2016 and served on the board of the Bernie-friendly Our Revolution organization for a time, she hasn’t said who she’s supporting this go-around As CNN has noted, she was recently spotted at a Beto rally, and has said positive things about Kamala Harris’ campaign.
Some are even suggesting Flores — a former Nevada state assemblywoman, serial Democratic candidate, and the head of a progressive Latina advocacy group called Luz Collective — is working as an agent for … Donald Trump or some shadowy Trump-friendly right-wing cabal.
One critic even seemed to suggest a plot spearheaded by meatloaf-headed Fox News host and Trump fan Sean Hannity … and
an obscure publication called Cutter magazine?
This would be a strange conspiracy indeed, because, as far as I can tell, Cutter magazine doesn’t exist, and back when it did exist, it was not a political journal but rather a trade publication for hairstylists?
I kid. Obviously AlphaFemale is just mangling the name of the decidedly non-Hannityesque The Cut, where Flores’ piece was published, and which I’ve written for as well.
Many of Flores’ less-conspiracy minded critics think the only person she’s working for is herself — that she’s a fame-hungry nobody who just wants a moment in the spotlight.
This is, of course, exactly what many of Kavanaugh’s defenders said about Ford, who was, you may recall, so excited about her newfound fame that she literally went into hiding after her testimony to protect herself and her family from possible violence from the MAGAs who had bombarded her with threats and abuse.
Some are trying a time-tested strategy of psychological manipulation known as DARVO (Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender), accusing Flores of being the real sexual harasser, because she allegedly put her hand on his shoulder first.
Never mind that a simple hand on the shoulder was never the issue. Flores, as you recall, says Biden, backstage at an event, grabbed both of her shoulders from behind, leaned forward to sniff her hair, and then “proceeded to plant a big slow kiss on the back of my head.” That’s different than briefly putting not even your hand but just two fingers on the shoulder of someone taking a selfie with you in it.
But the strangest, er, argument I’ve seen against Flores is that she’s a hypocrite because … she let Bernie touch her shoulders and didn’t complain about it.
When I first ran across this argument last night, in the tweet below, I was completely taken aback.
As I put it on Twitter: yeah, it’s kind of up to Flores to decide who can put their hands on her shoulders, since they are, you know, her shoulders.
Also, I don’t see Bernie smelling her hair or planting a big wet one of the back of her head.
Remarkably, I’ve run across others making the same weird argument as Holle:
This is appalling. It’s also not going to work. Kavanaugh won his #MeToo battle because Republicans — the politicians and the voters alike — have shown that they don’t give two shits about even the most credible stories of sexual harassment, sexual assault, or even child molestation — at least if the alleged perp is one of them.
But Democrats — most of them, anyway — actually care about this shit, as well they should. And Flores is only the first Biden accuser to speak up. A second accuser has already come forward with another story of inappropriate touching by Biden. More will surely follow, and because of the ample video evidence of Biden’s long history of bad touches it won’t be hard for most of us to believe them.
Last night I tried watching some of the videos in a Twitter thread devoted to Biden’s creepy behavior, and I couldn’t make it past the first couple of them without literally flinching in disgust — as some of the women and girls in the videos can’t help but doing themselves. To anyone still supporting Biden, I challenge you to watch the videos in this thread. Every single one of them. And then tell me that Flores is lying and that Biden is just a friendly old uncle. I don”t think you’ll be able to. His behavior is disqualifying. It can’t be excused any longer.
2020 is going to be ugly. But it will be a lot less ugly if Biden does the right thing and takes himself out of consideration. He’s had a long political career. It’s time for it to be over.
NOTE: I’m aware that there are trolls and even presumably some Russian bots on Twitter who are eager to amplify fights between the supporters of different candidates. I’ve made a point in this post to only quote those Tweeters who seem to be legit Democrats posting sincerely and to avoid those that have small follower counts or that look fishy for other reasons. And in case you’re wondering: I have not yet chosen a candidate myself; I have some issues with everyone out there, frankly, though there are several candidates I certainly could end up supporting without too much regret. I obviously would vote for even a literal piece of shit over Trump, but I would really prefer it if that piece of shit was not named Joe Biden.
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I was relieved that one of the women whose photo is being shown spoke up to point out that in her particular case, she didn’t think he was doing anything wrong, but emphasized that she was only talking about herself and that one instance:
https://medium.com/@scarterdc/the-metoo-story-that-wasnt-me-6c1d5eb1e94d
Which is a nice change from “He didn’t do it to me, therefore he can’t possibly ever have done it to anyone else.”
Of course, I imagine most of Biden’s defenders will ignore that bit.
I am not backing Biden (I’m a Harris voter myself), but I think this is getting a little out of hand. And no, I don’t think it’s a put-up job. I take her at her word that she was upset.
But we are approaching a dangerous point here, where any physical contact gives rise to outrage, even contact that is merely annoying. Because I doubt very much he meant it to be unsettling or sexual. And even if it’s a bit weird, well, there’s all kinds of people, and people express themselves in ways at times that some might not like.
I’m in my 60s, and I have always tried to be sensitive to how other people react to things I say or do. I’ve never been handsy with anyone I wasn’t involved with, or at least had dated multiple times. But not everyone is like that.
I lived my whole life wondering why women put up with the base crap men can be capable of. I never liked hearing from guys about whatever gross thing they did, or hearing the demeaning and objectifying things many of them said about women.
But again, I think this is getting a little much. There are “touchy” men and women, people who are naturally physical, whether it’s touching someone’s arm or embracing someone, and they don’t do it because they’re perverts or trying to get over. Maybe they grew up in very affectionate families, I don’t know. I’ve always been more reserved myself, but that’s just me. I’ve known and cared for many people who naturally display affection in physical, non-sexual ways. It’s who they are.
We seem to be establishing new rules. Some will be overdue, some will make sense. But some will redefine innocent behavior as something perverse. And it’s getting very subjective out there.
I have never seen Biden cross the line, nor have I heard of him being inappropriately sexual. I don’t know his heart, obviously. But I suspect he’s getting a bad rap here. And I will say, while I don’t think she’s trying to tank the guy, I do think that we have to learn to live with lots of different kinds of people, and some of them we won’t like. That doesn’t make them criminals. And criminalizing this sort of thing is the next step. And then we can listen for the tumbrels while patting ourselves on the back for being so “woke”.
I watched those Biden videos. The one where he puts his hands so close to the young girl’s breasts is appalling. The look on her face says it all. I remember being manhandled by creepy uncles as a child. I hated it, and I knew something was wrong. Grooming of kids often starts in public. Totally unacceptable.
@Jeff rayn
My senior year of highschool I had a sub teacher who was an elderly type woman and she sub for my film as lit class. She didn’t know how to work the dvd player so I showed her. She then proceed to swat my ass when i helped her figure it out. Later she apologized and said it was an loving gesture she did with her grandkids and did it out of reflex. It wasn’t meant to be sexual but was a still not okay and still nearly gave me a panic attack. Just because something isn’t meant to be sexual doesn’t mean it’s okay and had she been a full time teacher I would have reported her.
Jeff Ryan, if you watched the videos of those little girls being groped by Biden and think it’s okay – you honestly just don’t get it. If it’s not sexual why is he not stroking the hair of, and trying to kiss the boys…..
Not sexual? Why isn’t he stroking the hair of, and trying to kiss the boys? The excuses we make for unacceptable behavior, especially when children are involved, so sad.
Jeff Ryan, I don’t gives a shit what his intentions are. Intent’s not magic. I don’t have to and am not going to live with people who help themselves to my body.
I read stuff over at Raw Story. Some of the comments on the article they had today about the Biden accusations were pretty awful , in the same vein as the Tweets you’ve posted.
Saw the Biden thing coming from miles and miles away. 🙂 Anyone who didn’t was just willfully blind. Sadly, many of my friends thought Al Franken was innocent and it was a hit job on him, etc. etc., and I suspect I will hear it here too.
If I’m honest, I’m happy it happened now, so that better candidates will easily beat him in the primaries if he does run. He’s more of the dysfunctional establishment and we need someone with more spine.
Not gonna lie. Jeff Sounds like the ancient cop I talked to about my co worker stalking me who was like “the boy just gave you flowers. Its not like he’s threaten you” even though the flowers were put on my car and sent to my apartment.
Even if intent was magic, this disqualifies him, because of who he’d be going up against. The Republicans would plaster the airwaves with this, especially the pics/vids with young girls, and all the women who might have voted Republican but were turned off by the pussy-grabbing video will either abstain or find it easier to hold their noses and vote for Trump on the grounds that at least he’s the right party. All Biden’s advantages would be lost, because the Republicans would turn it into “Your guy is creepier than our guy, you hypocrites.” Between that and his being an establishment figure, he can’t be risked anymore.
Hmmm, I wonder why that could be…
Hmmmmmmm…..
Ugh, I managed three videos before I had to nope out.
@Jeff Ryan, if you think Biden’s behaviour doesn’t “cross the line”, either you haven’t watched the videos or you’re allowing partisanship to blind you.
@Jeff
Well, by all means, you, Jeff, should definitely be the arbiter of which behavior that women may or may not find uncomfortable when it is directed towards them.
There is, after all, a universally defined standard for what “base crap” women are responsible for not putting up with, and should be expected to fight against if they don’t want to be at fault for their victimization. And then there are clearly defined boundaries of totally innocuous behavior that could never be interpreted as threatening or innappropriate in any situation. There’s definitely no grey area or extenuating circumstances or different levels of comfort, and it’s definitely not women who are faced with harsh consequences and judgement for speaking up, for staying quiet, for fighting back, for not saying ‘no’ forcefully enough, etc etc etc.
Thanks for clearing up that whole problem for us, buddy. If you could just circulate that pamphlet of the specific behaviors which we are allowed to object to, then everyone can be on the same page.
/sarcasm
Yeah, I stopped about four videos in. That was horrible. Every single one of them cringes or goes still in that terrible way.
@jeff Ryan
I’m a touchy feely person. And I fucking ask before I go all touchy feely on people because I can put the possible desire of others not to be touched over my habits.
Even if he did not intend it to be creepy – he made girls feel unsafe and that’s not okay. If anything, he’s a politician. He is presumably good at reading people. I believe he would have noticed and even if he didn’t, the videos are obvious and I assume he or others who know him have seen them. Yet he didn’t stop.
@Jeff Ryan
Jeff … friend,
There is this concept called consent. Approach this from a different angle. Biden is a stranger, a powerful stranger. Would you want a stranger coming up to you or your family and start groping, smelling hair, and giving unwanted advances and kisses? Now imagine a stranger with the same level of power and authority as a vice president doing the exact same thing, and you can imagine how precarious resistance is.
This is just willful ignorance on your part. I saw Biden force himself on children, CHILDREN! These were not his children, and even if they were, they were clearly shown uncomfortable around him. He imposed himself on women and children without their consent, groping them, sniffing their hair, and kissing them. In a couple instances, his hands were inappropriately close to the chest nearly fondling the breast or around the waist on the hip.
This is not how a head of state should act in public or even in private, period.
@Jeff Ryan
No, we are at a very dangerous point where people excuse creepy assholes who don’t give a damn about borders, personal space and consent and whine about “any physical contact giving rise to outrage”.
Guess what: Doesn’t matter what the other person “meant”. Doesn’t matter if it’s just “annoying”. They are violating boundaries, reducing another person’s integrity below their own and FUCK THEM for it.
So you have kept to the bare minimum standard of human co-habitation. That’s good. Now stop excusing people who can’t even clear that threshold.
NO! If those people are a bit “molesty” then it’s THEIR issue and not the issue of those around them. They can either stick to a respectful code of human conduct, that doesn’t violate other’s borders, or they can leave the planet. Seriously, this isn’t a healthy way to express affection to what comes down to strangers and casual acquaintances.
Seriously, think about what you’re defending here.
@ Jeff Ryan
Explain, please, why touching other people without their consent is okay as long as it’s not threatening or sexual. Explain, please, why the (conscious) intent of the toucher even matters here.
My grandparents regularly force hugs on me. I find their touch extremely uncomfortable and, a lot like Flores, mortifying. I trust fully that their intention is in no way sexual, or to “unsettle” me, but it is absolutely a wilful violation of my boundaries and my autonomy, and as such, extremely disempowering and disrespectful.
People who touch others in this way often justify it with friendliness and love, but their real, true motive is asserting ownership/dominance over that other person. They may perceive their actions as pure and good, but that’s a facade they keep up for their own benefit.
If you don’t care about how your expressions of friendliness and affection are received, they do not come from friendliness or affection. They do not even come from basic respect. Whenever you actually want to do something nice to another person, or even just care what they think even just a little bit and aren’t really just doing it all for your own benefit, you do your damn best to find a nice thing that they will find nice, too. Everyone understands this on a deep, instinctive level. We automatically take care to be most respectful and consider how our actions will be received, when we are expressing friendliness to those we perceive as having higher status than ourselves.
For some reason it’s hard for a lot of people your age and older, and a lot of men, to understand that you can’t love people you don’t deeply respect. I mean, it’s not really such a mystery. I’d find it difficult to accept that I’ve never once loved anyone, too, and that what I believed was love was actually a far more sinister feeling, something more akin to a desire to possess and control. I’d find it difficult to accept that I’m evil.
I’ve never been a Biden fan. And Obama’s pick of him for VP was very disappointing to me, but mainly because of his policies (very cosy with credit card companies) and the Anita Hill hearings. I was not aware of the creepy Joe thing, but just because I’m not aware doesn’t mean it isn’t so. Looked at some of the vids available within seconds on YouTube. OMG. Ewwwww. Couldn’t finish watching.
For everyone who says “Why is she coming forward now? It’s obvious she’s only doing it now because of the presidential bid”, I just want to say “No Shit Sherlock” – the higher the office, the higher the standard (ought to be). If he’s a retiring politician then why she should she put herself forward and expose herself to all this crap if there’s no serious stake.
Unfortunately in politics there is a calculus to everything. Every political party is guilty of overlooking the flaws of their candidate and combing over those of the oppo.
In the case of Biden he is a politician from a different time. His position on women, on school integration, on consumer protection ought to belong to a different time. I don’t know what his intent was and I don’t really care. I do understand the desire to have a politician who is acceptable to a wider swathe of voters in swing states. And all parties have been guilty of choosing candidates who are acceptable to their own base but no further and paying for it in the generals.
I have no idea who I’ll be voting for in the primaries. It won’t be Biden, it would never have been Biden probably. To be honest, my life is so consumed by Brexit these days that I’ll just have to think about it later.
The right of old men to paw at the people around him regardless of the feelings of the people themselves is really not a good hill to die on.
And come on, we all know criticisms of Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris aren’t gonna receive this complete ‘BUT PARTY UNITY!!1!’ hand-wringing treatment (Or at least, not to nearly the same extent).
Quoting dust bunny’s very very truthful statement:
So very much this. It’s right up there with the “But I was only trying to HELP!” protest I usually hear from people who just barged in without identifying the problem, because their intent to help (or to be seen as helping) is apparently magical.
How is anyone so sure that Biden’s intent wasn’t sexual? How is anyone so sure he hasn’t escalated beyond awkward touching? If he’s willing to grope in public, what has he done in private?
I’m not saying he has done worse. I don’t know. Maybe he hasn’t. However, the lack of respect for boundaries and the gendered nature of the “non-sexual” affection are huge red flags to me. He is the kind of man I would make sure never to be alone with. Just saying.
I’m also not sure why so many are so certain that Biden’s the only one who can win the general. Centrist and conservative older white men like him. So what? They’re not the demographic needed to win. We need women, young people, people of color. We need high turnout. I don’t see Biden inspiring people through either personality or policy to come out and vote when they otherwise might not. Let’s not be held hostage by the demographic who’s in denial about the state of the nation and world and desperate to return to a good old days that never existed.
Meanwhile, Trump is threatening to shut down the whole entire border with Mexico. Which besides being terrifyingly authoritarian would be economically disastrous. And it’s barely a blip on the political radar. But sure. Lucy Flores is the worst and must be stopped.
Democrats need to take these accusations seriously. If they only take them seriously when they can use them as a bludgeon against Republicans, they’re… Well, not as bad as the other side, but still failing at basic human decency. It shouldn’t be “this is bad because people we don’t like are doing it,” it should be “we don’t like those people because they do shit like this.”
“Our side at all costs” is the Republican creed, and we’ve rightly condemned them for it. Democrats need to escape that trap themselves.
I wasn’t planning on voting for Biden anyway because I feel like more center right neoliberal policy is the last thing we need right now, but this absolutely ensures there’s he can do or say to sway my decision.