"This affectionate and sometimes intimate physical style is one of the former vice president’s trademarks, a defining feature of the warm and upbeat persona he has built..."

"... during more than four decades in the national spotlight. But the appropriateness of Biden’s physical behavior toward women is now being questioned, after a female Democratic politician penned a viral Internet piece describing an alleged 2014 encounter that left her offended and uncomfortable. As Biden prepares to announce whether he will run for president in 2020, the episode has raised questions about whether the older, self-described 'fingertip politician' is well-suited for the White House in the wake of the #MeToo movement and at a moment of rapidly shifting social norms.... Though photos attesting to this behavior abound on the Internet, they were often framed in past news accounts as harmless and sometimes entertaining — a sign of 'Biden being Biden.'... Then controversy erupted this weekend after [Lucy] Flores, the former Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor of Nevada, described Biden placing his hands on her shoulders, leaning in to smell her hair and kissing the back of her head as she prepared to speak at a 2014 campaign rally.'I had never experienced anything so blatantly inappropriate and unnerving before,' she wrote... During an interview Saturday, Flores said that she did not feel a sexual overtone in Biden’s alleged behavior toward her, but that this should not lead people to discount its seriousness....."

From "Joe Biden’s affectionate, physical style with women comes under scrutiny" in WaPo.

This is a pretty long article but it does not even mention something that I think is crucial. Who was involved in launching this new attack? The material is old. The Flores incident goes back to 2014. #MeToo prompted new speech about old incidents, but #MeToo goes back to the fall of 2017. Biden's likely candidacy has been plain since 2016. Biden has been leading the polls for quite a while. Various candidates who may think they deserve front-runner status — including all the women — find themselves stalled behind 2 old white men — Biden and Sanders — and looking at 2 young white men — O'Rourke and Buttigieg — moving up on them. Did Flores act entirely on her own or did one or more of the female candidates or their operatives move behind the scenes to scare up the old stories and push old Joe into disqualifying himself?

I watched Flores on Jake Tapper's "State of the Union" yesterday, and he confronted her with questions about whether she acted alone. She jumped very eagerly, so eagerly that we wondered if she was lying. I'm talking about the part that begins at 6:17, which we rewound and rewatched numerous times. Tapper asks "Did you have any conversations about what happened with any presidential campaign before you wrote that piece for The Cut?" She says "No" before he gets to the end of the question, and then — when he echoes and re-questions with "No, you haven't talked to anybody?" — "No, no," a double "no."



Here's the transcript.