Democrats and MeToo: Live by the Sword

Click: Rolling Stone

Zero Tolerance.

Believe the accuser.

Democrats have staked out new political, moral, and legal ground. Intention doesn't matter. What matters is how some action is perceived.

The trump card: "I am offended!"

Joe Biden is an old school politician. He is a toucher. He practices retail politics in the tradition of glad handing and kissing babies. People working a room shake hands, and press the flesh.  Our language embeds what happens. An old school politician demonstrates empathy by affectionate elimination of social distance.

Social distance is cultural and contextual. There is a distance one stands from one another on sidewalks in suburban areas, and a much closer distance one stands when in a crowded elevator or rush hour subway car.

I personally experienced a version of old school urban politics, and I cited it frequently in my reports on the 2016 Republican primary.  Chris Christie does retail politics up close. We did selfies together, closer than in the photo here. When he shook my hand he looked me full in the face, with his nose perhaps five inches from mine. HIs right hand was in my right hand, his left hand was on my left shoulder. It was a bit like slow dancing.

Hello, cousin. Christie was making body language communication of embracement. He was governor, a big shot, but we were peers here in the embrace. I was family.

Chris Christie, I said, knew how to do retail politics.

Joe Biden is a toucher. It was thought a huge political asset. Now it may destroy his campaign.

Joe Biden is being accused of making two women uncomfortable, in a display of sexual invasion.

Joe Biden explained it his way:  "In my many years on the campaign trail and in public life, I have offered countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection support and comfort. And not once--never--did I believe I acted inappropriately. If it is suggested I did so, I will listen respectfully. But it was never my intention."

That may not be good enough. Indeed, one of his accusers, Lucy Flores, says it isn't even relevant.

Flores said it was an assault of a man against a woman. "Frankly, my point was never about his intentions, and they shouldn't be about his intentions. It should be about the woman on the receiving end of that behavior."  "I want him to acknowledge it was wrong," she said.

This is huge. It has consequences, and Democrats are jumping aboard the Flores train. 

Democrats created a new standard. Believe the accusers. What matters is her sense of offense. If a woman felt the man invaded her personal privacy and autonomy, for example in this instance when perceived as a "slow kiss on the back of the head" it was an assault, a political tort. She was offended so he was wrong.

Some Democrats have some misgivings about the piling onto of Al Franken, but they jumped on the chance to double down during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings so that is the new Democratic orthodoxy: Zero tolerance, believe the accuser, the woman's perception is the one that counts, and discomfort equals assault. 

Democratic activists hoping to eliminate the centrist Biden threat may welcome this development. However, the issue is bigger. Democrats are changing the relevant legal and cultural standards in relations of men and women--indeed the law and culture in general.

Typically the intention of the actor is central. Mishaps happen, and what is important is whether the actor had malicious or innocent mindset. A driver who has an unintended mishap had an "accident," and it is not treated as criminal destruction. We jostle someone else, realize it, say, "Oops, clumsy me, sorry" and the breach is resolved. Under the new rule, "oops, clumsy me, sorry" is not a defense. There is no safe harbor of action, intention, or time.

Offense is the trump card.

The Kavanaugh backlash showed that the new standard frightens many people, appearing unaccountable and lacking due process. Democrats uneasy with this are too intimidated to object.

It is a dangerous, self-destructive decision. It firms up the Republican hold on male voters, and it will include not just men but also women married to men, a group Hillary lost decisively in 2016. Democrats can console themselves thinking that those married women are foolish co-conspirators in the power of patriarchy, and they will wise up, but there is something deeper involved--the notion of justice.

Intent does matter. Deep-set Judeo-Christian values affirm that humans have moral choices, and take moral responsibility for their intentions, but not every outcome, because accidents happen.

Democrats who side with Lucy Flores and Democrats may be causing voters to consider Trump--for all his faults--a safer defender of liberty and justice than they do Flores and the Democrats who back her.