By John Krull TheStatehouseFile.com INDIANAPOLIS – Donald Trump may have saved Joe Biden. Not all that long ago, the accusations from several women and men that the former vice president had embraced or otherwise touched them in non-sexual ways that made them uncomfortable would have doomed Biden’s as-yet undeclared presidential candidacy. After all, similar allegations […]
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INDIANAPOLIS – Donald Trump may have saved Joe Biden.
Not all that long ago, the accusations from several women and men that the former vice president had embraced or otherwise touched them in non-sexual ways that made them uncomfortable would have doomed Biden’s as-yet undeclared presidential candidacy. After all, similar allegations forced Minnesota Democrat Al Franken to resign from the U.S. Senate not all that long ago.
Franken’s departure, though, demonstrated a difference between the two major political parties and the constituencies they represent.
When he resigned, Franken made note of an irony.
He said he was leaving office after being accused of touching women – and apologizing for doing so.
Meanwhile, a president who had boasted on camera about grabbing women by the crotch and has been accused by more than a dozen women of sexual assault and other forms of sexual misconduct remains ensconced in office.
Without apologizing for any of it.
Moreover, the president’s party, which for decades had presented itself as the honor guard for traditional morality and marital fidelity, defends him and his actions.
Nor is the conservative defense of sexual misconduct limited to Donald Trump.
When several women – all of them Republican and conservative – accused Alabama GOP U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of actions ranging from creepy to criminal when they were underage, the president didn’t abandon Moore.
Nor did evangelical Christians. Exit polls from that special election revealed that 80 percent of social conservatives cast their ballots for a man who had been credibly accused of the equivalent of child molestation.
Those conservatives’ desire to get enough seats on the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and their hunger for tax cuts trumped their devotion to faith and family values.
Moore says he’s thinking about running for the Senate again next year.
He claims social conservatives have been urging him to give it another go.
The bet here is that Moore will win if he runs – and that his 80 percent support among evangelical Christians will climb to close to 90 percent.
There’s a lesson Democrats have drawn from these scandals in the me-too era.
They see that when Republicans find themselves accused of sexual misconduct, however serious, they circle the wagons.
Democrats also formed circles in such situations.
But, to paraphrase the late Will Rogers, they then fired back toward the center.
They seem to have stopped doing that.
They seem to realize that if Republicans refuse to police the behavior of President Trump, Roy Moore or, even here in Indiana, Attorney General Curtis Hill, the GOP lacks standing to complain about the transgressions of anyone else.
That’s why it appears that Biden will survive this episode, which likely will end up being little more than a temporary embarrassment for him. The people most likely to push the case against him have tied their own hands by defending or at least condoning, among others, a crotch-grabbing president, a Senate candidate who had an unhealthy fascination with young girls and a grabby Indiana attorney general.
This isn’t a good thing.
Personal autonomy is emerging as one of the dominant issues of the coming era.
Particularly for women.
They realize that, if they can’t exert authority over their own bodies, they can’t control much else in their lives. The man who can grip and grope them without their consent also can deny them many other things.
That’s a truth many men struggle to grasp.
Including Joe Biden.
He seemed to think that exerting a form of ownership over someone else’s body was okay provided he wasn’t making a sexual advance while doing so.
It isn’t.
People have the right to own their own bodies.
But Biden likely will survive this uproar because the political party that historically has championed family values has greatly expanded the limits of what it considered acceptable personal misconduct.
In effect, Donald Trump threw Joe Biden a lifeline.
There’s irony in all this.
Painful irony.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism, host of “No Limits” WFYI 90.1 Indianapolis and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.
