For greater than three weeks, progressive activists and girls’s rights advocates debated easy methods to deal with an allegation of sexual assault
For greater than three weeks, progressive activists and girls’s rights advocates debated easy methods to deal with an allegation of sexual assault towards Joseph R. Biden Jr. The conversations weren’t straightforward, nor have been the politics: Mr. Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, confronted one allegation; his opponent, President Trump, no less than a dozen.
Lastly, a number of of the ladies’s teams ready a public letter that praised Mr. Biden’s work as an “outspoken champion for survivors of sexual violence” but additionally pushed him to handle the allegation from Tara Reade, a former aide who labored in Mr. Biden’s Senate workplace within the early 1990s.
“Vice President Biden has the chance, proper now, to mannequin easy methods to take critical allegations significantly,” the draft letter stated. “The burden of our expectations matches the magnitude of the workplace he seeks.”
Then Mr. Biden’s group heard concerning the advocates’ effort. In response to individuals concerned within the discussions, the group put the letter on maintain because it started pressuring Biden advisers to push the candidate to make a press release himself earlier than the top of April, which is Sexual Assault Consciousness Month. Together with liberal organizers, they urged him to acknowledge the significance of survivors and the necessity for systemic change round problems with sexism and assault.
Practically two weeks later, Mr. Biden and his marketing campaign have but to make that assertion, and the advocates haven’t launched their letter. The Biden marketing campaign has stated little publicly past saying that ladies need to be heard and insisting that the allegation just isn’t true; privately, Biden advisers have circulated speaking factors urging supporters to disclaim that the incident occurred.
As two extra ladies have come ahead to corroborate a part of Ms. Reade’s allegation, the Biden marketing campaign is dealing with assaults from the appropriate and growing strain from the left to handle the problem. And liberal activists discover themselves in a tense standoff with a candidate they need to help however who they are saying has made little try to indicate management on a difficulty that resonates deeply with their get together’s base.
“It’s troublesome for survivors to see {that a} girl who has extra corroborating sources than most survivors have in related conditions is being tossed apart and actively being weaponized by cynical political actors,” stated Shaunna Thomas, a founding father of UltraViolet, a ladies’s rights advocacy group that’s concerned within the effort to push the marketing campaign. “It could be an unbelievable second of management for Joe Biden to indicate up.”
Since Ms. Reade spoke out in March together with her allegation — that Mr. Biden penetrated her along with his fingers in a Senate constructing in 1993 — his aides and advisers have denied it, saying it’s “unfaithful.” They’ve remained unconcerned about any vital political blowback from Ms. Reade’s accusation, in accordance with individuals who have spoken with the marketing campaign, who insisted on anonymity to debate personal conversations.
Prime Biden aides are telling allies that they don’t see the allegation resonating with voters in a measurable method, these individuals say. They’re assured that the allegation won’t shake voters’ perceptions of Mr. Biden’s character as a loyal father and husband, with household ties cast by way of deep tragedies. They also believe that voters will view the allegation with great skepticism.
A Biden campaign spokesman declined to comment for this article on Wednesday. A Biden adviser said that the campaign was talking to activists and that Mr. Biden considered their views important.
The Biden campaign talking points, which were first reported by BuzzFeed News, instruct supporters to describe the candidate as a “fierce advocate for women” who has never faced any “complaint, allegation, hint or rumor of any impropriety or inappropriate conduct.” The talking points also inaccurately suggested that an investigation by The New York Times this month found that “this incident did not happen.”
In a statement issued Wednesday, The Times noted that the investigation “made no conclusion either way.”
One person who received a version of these talking points said it was pulled back by the campaign several hours later because the campaign was revising its strategy. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose the private communication.
Mr. Biden has yet to be asked about the allegation in an interview. In a joint appearance with Hillary Clinton that was livestreamed on his website on Tuesday, he discussed domestic violence, economic challenges facing women and the stresses of the coronavirus pandemic. No mention was made of Ms. Reade or her specific allegation.
“Violence against women is a huge problem, and especially right now,” he said. Ending violence against women has “been one of the leading causes of my life,” he added.
His campaign on Tuesday also released plans to support women during the coronavirus crisis that included proposals to help victims of domestic violence.
In recent months, Mr. Biden has taken steps that appear to show he understands how a commitment to representation and equity might resonate with women, who make up the majority of voters for Democratic candidates. He has pledged to pick a woman as a running mate and nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court.
Yet as he seeks to unite the Democratic Party after the primaries and pivot to a general election against Mr. Trump, Ms. Reade’s allegation remains a subject of intense discussion in the political world.
Republicans and the Trump campaign are already using the accusation to undercut Mr. Biden and the Democratic Party as hypocritical on issues of gender equity. Some in the party’s liberal wing have seized on Ms. Reade’s account, saying she should be heard and using her allegation to argue that Mr. Biden is not the party’s strongest possible nominee — a tactic that Biden backers fear could hamper their ability to build Democratic enthusiasm around his bid.
“It can’t appear that she is being ignored,” said Nina Turner, a former national campaign co-chair for Senator Bernie Sanders, Mr. Biden’s last rival for the nomination. “If we want to keep our credibility as a party, then we will have to agree that this allegation and any allegation should be vetted in the public.”
Apart from the discussions with the campaign, some progressive activists have been debating how to respond to the allegation, a conversation that has intensified in recent days.
“Joe Biden himself needs to respond directly,” said Yvette Simpson, the chief executive of Democracy for America, a progressive advocacy organization, which plans to back the Democratic nominee. “While it is absolutely essential that we defeat Donald Trump in November, trying to manage the response through women surrogates and emailed talking points doesn’t cut it in 2020 — especially if Democrats want to continue to be the party that values, supports, elevates, hears and believes women.”
There has been no public polling on how voters are viewing the specific allegation, though surveys show that among voters who dislike both candidates, significantly more prefer Mr. Biden.
Tresa Undem, a pollster who specializes in surveys on gender issues, said that so far the allegation hasn’t dampened support for Mr. Biden among Democrats. But that could change quickly, she said, depending on how Mr. Biden and his campaign handle the evolving situation.
“If the election was held today, I don’t think he’d lose any support,” she said. “But this is a huge deal that’s not going away. The story is going to be on the hypocrisy, and that is the No. 1 thing voters loathe.”
Among Republicans, the years of allegations against Mr. Trump have inflicted little damage with his base. He has been accused of sexual assault and misconduct by more than a dozen women, who have described behavior that went far beyond the allegation against Mr. Biden. He has repeatedly denigrated women over their appearance and intellect. The “Access Hollywood’’ tape, in which he boasted about grabbing women’s genitals, was released just weeks before his victory in the 2016 election.
In recent years, Democrats have sought to confront current and past misconduct in their own ranks and spoken bluntly about racial and gender inequalities.
Already, the allegation against Mr. Biden has caused top female allies — including several widely considered to be vice-presidential prospects, like Stacey Abrams of Georgia and Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota — to face questioning about whether they stand with Mr. Biden after the allegation. Privately, some female Democrats are growing frustrated with being put in the position of answering for Mr. Biden when he has remained silent, and male progressive leaders, even outspoken allies in combating sexual assault, have not been pressured to address this point.
Many have publicly defended him, including Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who helped lead the effort to push Al Franken, the former Minnesota senator, to resign over sexual harassment accusations in 2017. “I stand by Vice President Biden,” Ms. Gillibrand said on a conference call, adding there needed to be “space for all women to come forward to speak their truth, to be heard.”
Last year, Ms. Reade was one of eight women who came forward to say Mr. Biden had kissed, hugged or touched them in ways that made them feel uncomfortable, but she did not raise the assault allegation then.
In an interview on Tuesday, Ms. Reade described herself as disappointed with the response from the Biden campaign, saying it had not contacted her. Ms. Reade backed Mr. Sanders in the primary race and does not plan to vote in the general election. She told The Times that politics were not the reason she came forward with her allegation, saying she did not want to be used by the Trump campaign.
“Sexual assault and sexual harassment in the workplace is a huge gender, institutionalized problem in our country, and the fact that they are not addressing my allegations head-on and dealing with the corroborating evidence is simply a testimony to the hypocrisy,” she said. “There is no partisanship with sexual assault and harassment. It is an equal opportunity offender.”
One of the women, Lynda LaCasse, a former neighbor of Ms. Reade’s, said in an interview with The Times on Tuesday that Ms. Reade told her around 1995 about her encounter with Mr. Biden. Ms. LaCasse said she and Ms. Reade had been discussing their experiences with abuse and violence when Ms. Reade mentioned Mr. Biden.
“She said that he put her up against the wall and he put his hand up her skirt and he put his fingers inside her,” Ms. LaCasse said, adding that Ms. Reade “was devastated. She sounded really upset. She was crying.”
Ms. LaCasse, who is now 60 and lives in Oregon, said she was a Democrat and supported Mr. Biden. But she said she wanted to come forward because “that doesn’t take away from what happened.”
The second woman, identified as Lorraine Sanchez by Business Insider, a former colleague of Ms. Reade’s in the mid-1990s, said she recalled Ms. Reade describing an incident of harassment by her former boss. She provided a statement outlining her account to The Times.
Former Senator Barbara Boxer of California, who has endorsed Mr. Biden, said in an interview that she thought the campaign had handled Ms. Reade’s allegation “well” and that it had “done everything that they can do.” She said the Biden campaign had not given her talking points.
“If they ask me my advice,” she said, “it would be keep on doing what they’re doing.”
Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.