Amy Lappos, 43, who was a congressional aide to Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., at the time of the alleged incident, told the Washington Examiner that Biden, 76, should not run for president in 2020 and should support a female candidate instead.

She described how he put his hand around her neck and pulled her toward him to rub noses. She said she thought he was going to kiss her on the mouth. “This is the Al Franken thing all over again,” she said.

Well, no. No it’s not. Franken was 100% expendable at the time; everyone knew he’d be replaced by a Democrat and thus the Party wouldn’t suffer. There were only pluses for Democrats in throwing him under that crowded bus. They’d get #MeToo points to use against the Republicans, and they’d lose nothing by it. Al who? Never heard of him.

Biden is different. He’s not in office but he’s running for the highest office in the land. Not only that, but he’s one of the frontrunners. His touchy-feely stuff occurred while he was in office, much of it in full view of the world, and yet only the right was mentioning it during the eight years he was VP. Fancy that.

Biden was protected then as Obama’s veep. Now he’s fair game, at least for the moment, at least a little bit. Why? Because someone among the Democrats must want him out of the race. I suspect some other candidate or candidates. Note in that quote I gave, Lappos says that Biden “should support a female candidate instead.” I don’t know which one is behind this (or ones are behind this), but it is not some sort of coincidence that much is being made of this now.

Nothing has changed about Biden. Nothing. The Democratic establishment—Nancy Pelosi and the like in Congress—is more or less defending him (albeit a bit weakly), so we can guess that they see him as a very viable candidate for their side and don’t want to lose him:

…Democrats took a similarly neutral position on Biden, a beloved figure in the Democratic Party who also served in the Senate for 35 years. They view his behavior as questionable but not something that rises to the level of sexual harassment.

“I think he’s got to just really be thoughtful about the change in culture,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash. “This is clearly not a sexual harassment allegation but it is a question of just making sure people understand the boundaries of how you interact with people.”…

On Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the accusations don’t disqualify him as a candidate for president, but on Tuesday in a Politico interview she suggested he hasn’t responded appropriately.

“To say ‘I’m sorry that you were offended’ is not an apology. ‘I’m sorry I invaded your space,’ but not ‘I’m sorry you were offended’ because what is that? That’s not accepting the fact that people think differently about communication,” Pelosi told Politico during a live event.

Biden, in a statement Sunday, said he never meant to offend the women.

But it’s not as though this “change in culture” is something that just happened yesterday. And it’s really not a change, actually. I’m pretty old, and it was never especially acceptable for some strange guy—even someone in political office—to do what Biden has done. It was always creepy, even when I was a girl. Among all Biden’s other failings (for example this and this), he is at the very least completely tone deaf to the usual standards of behavior between men and women. If it hadn’t become one of my least favorite words on earth, I’d even call his attitude “privileged.”

And yet the 76-year-old Biden (he is slated to turn 78 just a couple of weeks after the 2020 election) is one of the Democratic frontrunners. Go figure.

And someone’s not very happy about it.

The post No, Biden’s not like Franken appeared first on The New Neo.