Say, About Creepy Uncle Joe Biden

“Top Democratic 2016 contenders are poor generals in the ‘war on women,'” Ashe Schow writes at the Washington Examiner: 

Now that the opening shots have been fired in the “war on women” 2016 narrative, a ploy used by Democrats in 2012 to paint Republicans as anti-woman, it’s time to retaliate. The current top two contenders for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination – Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden – are really, really lousy figures in the pro-woman department.

Vice President Biden, who currently appears to skate away from controversy as “Creepy Uncle Joe,” has a weird habit of treating women like Richard Dawson, the former “Family Feud” host known for kissing female contestants. As my colleague Byron York pointed out on Tuesday, it’s time to ask why it’s okay for Biden to act like a 1960s corporate manager (without the extramarital affairs) but not okay for the coworker or friend to do so.

Especially given the fact that this is the same Biden who has for decades championed the Violence Against Women Act and more recently, the Obama administration’s efforts to combat campus sexual assault. In 2000, as York also noted, Biden said “There is no circumstance under which a man has a right to touch a woman without her consent other than self-defense.” This would be at odds with the inappropriate touching of women by Biden during White House events. As far as I can tell, he has not been defending himself from constant physical attacks by politicians, wives or daughters. But I guess that would be the ultimate twist.

But with Democrats and their activists giving so much attention to the issue of campus sexual assault, could they really nominate someone who at nearly every event he attends does something that college activists would label as assault? Or will the old Richard Nixon defense be used: “when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

The “1960s corporate manager” reference is key — barring a disastrous gaffe by Hillary (let me rephrase that, given her propensity at making them — barring a disastrous gaffe by Hillary which somehow gains traction among the American people despite the best efforts of DNC operatives with bylines to tamp down the fire), Biden is at this point the longest of longshots at getting the Democrat nomination. Instead, the Hollywood that religiously watches Mad Men every week and tut-tuts the lecherous behavior of Don Draper and Roger Sterling (while looking the other way at the lecherous behavior of Woody & Roman and dozens of others in their own industry), will cheerfully give their pocket change to the wife of Bill Clinton.

To be fair to Biden though, as Jim Treacher writes, “He should maybe stop contributing to rape culture by feeling up anything in a skirt, but I hope he never stops telling us how much Obama stinks.”