The Democrat-media complex has suddenly decided that Joe Biden has a creepiness problem. Why now? Why not when he was Vice President for eight years? Does anyone remember the allegedly fierce White House press corps pelting the press secretary with questions, asking when Obama would tell his understudy to stop putting his hands on women – and little girls, too – and putting his face uncomfortably close to theirs?
There have been scads of photos of Biden pawing women, putting his arms around girls, kissing their necks, etc. Conservatives have mocked them for a long time. But liberals always suggested it was just “Biden being Biden.”
Back in February 2015, the internet went viral with pictures and video of Biden at Ashton Carter’s swearing-in as Secretary of Defense. He stood behind Carter’s wife Stephanie and placed his hands on her shoulders and his nose in her ear, whispering....something. The optics were eerie, to say the least. But this was Uncle Joe, and it generated only a light gasp, followed by giggles.
NBC noted The Washington Post called him “The World’s Most Powerful Close-Talker.” ABC actually quoted the Daily Caller for a giggle: "The new secretary of defense can't even defend his wife from Joe Biden." They were also jokey at CNN, as John King mused “I guess it all depends on your generation and your view of Joe Biden. But, at one point, if you watch her eyes, she looks like she wishes she could say, ‘Scotty, beam me up.’”
This changed on Friday, when Lucy Flores, a Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor of Nevada in 2014, recounted a tale of then-Vice President Biden grabbing her by the shoulders, and leaning in to smell her hair and kiss her on the head. Flores is a backer of Bernie Sanders.
Flores testified “I felt two hands on my shoulders. I froze. ‘Why is the vice-president of the United States touching me?...He leaned further in and inhaled my hair. I was mortified....He proceeded to plant a big slow kiss on the back of my head. My brain couldn’t process what was happening. I was embarrassed. I was shocked. I was confused.”
Biden issued a statement in response: “I have offered countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support and comfort and not once -- never -- did I believe I acted inappropriately.”
So what’s happened to turn the tables on Uncle Joe, who’s now five years older, and presumably less menacing? The big change in the interim is the #MeToo movement, of course, where excesses have ruined what would otherwise be a noble demand for a return to chivalry. Biden’s behavior in no way compares to the rapacious assaults of a Harvey Weinstein. There’s no evidence of sexual harassment. It doesn’t matter. To the radicals, perception’s enough to justify a lynching.
But it’s not just the #MeToo overreach. Biden is leading in many polls, and that’s a problem for the radicals who perceive that he’s not leftist enough. He’s not perceived to be as leftist as Bernie Sanders. He’s not perceived to be as leftist as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It doesn’t matter that he favors abortion on demand, or declared in 2012 that transgenderism is the “civil rights issue of our time.” It doesn’t matter that he’s taken a far-left position on just about everything. He may rate a 99 percent on the Left, but they’re looking for 103 percent.
The number one “journalism” objective in 2020 is beating President Trump. They are clearly seeking to remove the biggest obstacle to an American socialist revolution. Democrats who don’t march in lockstep may be yesterday’s news.
