It’s all cool, bro.
Former Vice President Joe Biden is getting a lot of headlines lately, and not exactly the kind you want to get when you’re thinking about running for president. He’s also earning a new nickname — Handsy Joe — for all his touchy-feeliness with women over the years.
But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a woman, doesn’t think the new allegations should prevent Biden from moving into the White House.
Asked on Monday if she thinks the claims from two women should prevent Biden from being president, Pelosi said: “No. No, I do not.”
“I don’t think that this disqualifies him from being president,” the California Democrat said. “Not at all.”
On Tuesday, though, she had some advice for Biden: No more touching.
“Join the straight-arm club,” Pelosi told a breakfast hour Washington event on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported.
“Just pretend you have a cold and I have a cold,” Pelosi said.
Pelosi, D-Calif., told the event, which was sponsored by Politico, that Biden “has to understand that in the world we are in now people’s space is important to them and what’s important is how they receive it, not necessarily how you intended it.”
Democrats have a huge tolerance for misogynist men — as long as they’re Democrats. Liberals fiercely defended then President Bill Clinton after he had an affair with a White House intern his daughter’s age and lied under oath about it, saying the whole story was “just about sex.” Clinton’s alleged sexual promiscuity was long reported, including affairs with lounge singers and accusations that he raped or sexually accosted at least three women.
Meanwhile, Democrats became enraged over allegations that Brett Kavanaugh, then a nominee for a seat on the Supreme Court, had supposedly once pushed girl onto a bed at a drunken high school party 35 years ago.
Last week, Lucy Flores, a former Nevada Democratic assemblywoman who was running for higher office, came out with allegations that Biden inappropriately touched her during a campaign rally in 2014, saying she felt uncomfortable and demeaned by his touching.
Then on Monday, another woman came forward with new allegations. Amy Lappos told the Hartford Courant that “Biden touched her inappropriately and rubbed noses with her during a 2009 political fundraiser in Greenwich when he was vice president.”
“It wasn’t sexual, but he did grab me by the head,” Amy Lappos told The Courant. “He put his hand around my neck and pulled me in to rub noses with me. When he was pulling me in, I thought he was going to kiss me on the mouth.”
And she said Biden crossed the line. “There’s absolutely a line of decency. There’s a line of respect. Crossing that line is not grandfatherly. It’s not cultural. It’s not affection. It’s sexism or misogyny.”
Biden’s fellow Democrats, especially the ones who are already running for president, have let him twist in the wind — or pounced on the allegations outright.
“I believe Lucy Flores,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said in Iowa on Sunday. “And Joe Biden needs to give an answer.”
When Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont was asked if Flores’ allegation disqualifies Biden from running for president, he said: “That’s a decision for the vice president to make.”
Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, also a 2020 candidate, said Biden’s actions were cause for concern. “Certainly, I think it’s very disconcerting and I think that women have to be heard and we should start by believing them.” And another candidate, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said she has “no reason not to believe” Flores.
“I think we know from campaigns and politics that people raise issues and they have to address them, and that’s what he will have to do with the voters if he gets into the race,” she said on Sunday.