Joe Biden indeed said it ain’t so, with the same conviction and instensity as when then-President Bill Clinton fibbed that, “I did not have sex with that woman…Monica Lewinsky.”

Which is to say that a denial, no matter how strenuously made, is only the start. As when Chicago Daily News reporter Charley Owens said,”Say it ain’t so, Joe” about “Shoeless Joe” Jackson, a star outfielder for the Chicago White Sox who was accused of helping throw the 1919 World Series as part of the “Black Sox” scandal. It was, when the evidence was in, so.

Biden poured forth his denials during an interview on MSNBC, the Democrat version of Fox News. Consider it to be Biden’s arraignment. Judgment to be made after all the evidence is in.

The former vice president and assumed Democratic presidential candidate firmly and repeatedly denied that he sexually assaulted his former aide Tara Reade. She said on a podcast that Biden had pinned her against a wall, reached under her skirt and pushed his fingers inside her when she was a 29-year-old staff assistant 27 years ago.

It doesn’t matter how well Biden performed in the interview. Or what the instant, favorable analysis said, as did the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin when she wrote tout de suite after the interview ended in “What Joe Biden did right in rebutting Tara Reade’s claims,” 

Biden invited a thorough investigation but in the same appearance threw a wrench into it. He has or will ask the National Archives to search the records for documentation that Reade filed a contemporary complaint about the incident. That’s where any written evidence of a complaint would be found, he insisted, asserting that nothing will be found.

What he won’t open up are his Senate papers housed at the University of Delaware. He argued that no one should even look through the papers to find if Reade’s name is there. That would protect Biden’s claim that classified or secret information in the archives means that they can’t be opened. The university says they can’t be opened until two years after he retires from public service.

Reade’s integrity can be questioned, despite what the #MeToo movement said during the Kavanaugh hearings. At the same time, she should be given the respect she deserves, despite what the partisan’s have already irresponsibly declared her to be a fraud.

Even Biden said that the facts must be followed, even though he has already declared the facts say he is innocent.

So, let the search begin.

dennis@dennisbyrne.net

www.dennisbyrne.net 

My historical novel: Madness: The War of 1812

To subscribe to the Barbershop, type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.