Vice President Biden isn't the guy lurking in the alley. He's also not the guy whistling at women and saying rude things in public.
He's the guy you trust. The one who says all the right things. Your friend. Your neighbor. An older relative. Always there for you. Outspoken about morality. The kind of person whom you just know would never do anything like that, so that even when a familiar, quantifiable pattern has emerged that shows he would and has done things like that, you still don't believe it because you'd rather not.
The way that the allegations against Vice President Biden are being sidestepped is insidious. It is exactly how sexual harassment and sexual assault continue to weave their destructive way through every culture in every country, despite everything.
It also doesn't seem to me that the Republican Party is saying much about this scandal, and I don't think that's because the Republican Party has more or less of an investment in preventing sexual assault than it has had before. I think it's because most or even all of the Republican Party believed the people who accused men whom that party supported and it doesn't want to do or say anything to renew scrutiny of those allegations or of its approach to these issues.
