The Omnivore's Read on Tara

Someone (who is voting for Trump, most likely, even though his administration's incompetence may bankrupt or even kill her) asked if The Omnivore was gonna write about Tara Reade. Here it is.

1. Bernie-Stans Can Shut Up About It
There is a conversation (The Omnivore supposes) to be had--but not with Bernie-Stans. Why not? Don't they get to ask questions? Well, sure--but if Biden was proven 100% innocent of the allegations they still wouldn't vote for him so the conversation is, necessarily, in bad faith. It's trying to concern-troll ("maybe we should pick some other old white guy since Biden's gonna crash and burn on this in November!--Hey! I have just the guy in mind!!") or they just want to call any Democrat a "rape apologist" or whatever. It's noise. You don't have a conversation with noise.

2. The Trumpaloos Can Shut Up About It
If Biden did exactly what Tara (now) alleges he did, it's what Trump bragged about on tape. Just locker room talk? Uh huh. Sure. Trumpaloos may want to claim hypocrisy ("But muh Kavanaugh!") or try to actually condemn Biden for it (no one said a Trumpaloo was ever gonna be consistent) but the fact is that they don't actually care about this behavior. Sure: they thought Kavanaugh and Trump were innocent--but if it'd been shown to be (likely) true? So what? Unless one of them actually catches a rape charge they don't care. You don't have to either.

3. Who Does That Leave?
People who don't hate Biden for other reasons, but feel this is critically important. More important than, literally, saving 10s of thousands of American lives. That's not many people. The fact is that any competent human (i.e. Pence) in the White House would have (a) not believed China, (b) not mistaken pollyanna announcements (designed to juice the stock market) for providing moral support and optimism and (c) wouldn't have utterly destroyed our potential preparedness.

Pence probably wouldn't be cheering for the Open-It-Up Protesters at the same time he released a Power Point plan with phased approaches that the open-it-up states aren't following.

No: Trump is a Turducken Of COVID-19. There is no worse: if you can't vote against him over that because of a rape allegation? The Omnivore doesn't really know what to say to that. It's like three or four of you--so, follow your conscience, y'all.

What ABOUT The Allegation?
The Omnivore never came down on a clear decision with Kavanaugh (you can go check). He believes Kavanaugh was likely a drunken jerk in high school and drunk and maybe a jerk after that--but eh? Did he do it? The Omnivore doesn't know.

So you can stuff the Whaddabout shit you had ready.

Now, as far as these things go: Tara has several things stacked against her that Ford didn't. For one thing she was an avid Bernie-stan (who even tweeted about getting the timing of her allegations right) and she "came out" on a political pod-cast (which isn't exactly normal). She also "came out" last year--but with neck touching. Things changed.

None of this means anything for sure: The Omnivore is certain something happened (the mom call in)--but the lack of a complaint (as yet) and the shifting story to be more damaging in a more highly charged political environment--from a political activist--doesn't fill The Omnivore with confidence.

Furthermore: Believe Women, as a slogan, was never nuanced enough to be policy. It's a statement that you shouldn't assume women are lying--especially since making claims of rape is, even in the best of times, a really awful thing to go through for what is usually very, very little value.

The #MeToo movement is most valuable when (a) there's more than one woman--unrelated--showing the same behavior (i.e. Cosby and Weinstein) and (b)  the charge is being made from a person who does not have much personally to gain. Ford might be a rabid Republican-hater--but that's never been shown. Berniestans are, it turns out, on the record as being toxic politically.

So The Omnivore doesn't really think the movement per se applies so much here and, in any event, almost no one involved in anything has the standing to take advantage of it.

A Final Note: The Omnivore is not impressed with Tara's accusation--but that's largely because The Omnivore is not impressed with Bernie Sanders people in general. Biden is certainly handsy and he's been called out for that. If more evidence comes to light then it could well turn out that he crossed the line from neck-touching (not good) to grabbing her by the pu**y (really bad).

It wouldn't change The Omnivore's vote: Too many Americans are dying to give this administration another 4 years.