This is not ok.
An Awkward Kiss Changed How I Saw Joe Biden
I felt him get closer to me from behind. He leaned further in and inhaled my hair. I was mortified. I thought to myself, “I didn’t wash my hair today and the vice-president of the United States is smelling it. And also, what in the actual fuck? Why is the vice-president of the United States smelling my hair?” He proceeded to plant a big slow kiss on the back of my head. My brain couldn’t process what was happening. I was embarrassed. I was shocked. I was confused. There is a Spanish saying, “tragame tierra,” it means, “earth, swallow me whole.” I couldn’t move and I couldn’t say anything. I wanted nothing more than to get Biden away from me. My name was called and I was never happier to get on stage in front of an audience.
It’s no secret that Joe Biden has a history of inappropriately smelling females’ hair and touching or kissing them without their permission.
Lucy Flores isn’t alone. Joe Biden’s got a long history of touching women inappropriately.
The media gave Biden a pass for years. It won’t in 2020.
Flores’s experience isn’t unique. It is no secret in Washington that Biden has touched numerous women inappropriately in public. It’s just never been treated as a serious issue by the mainstream press.
Biden’s been caught on camera embracing a female reporter from behind and gripping her above her waist, just below her bust. At a swearing-in ceremony for Defense Secretary Ash Carter, Biden put his hands on the shoulders of Stephanie Carter, Carter’s wife, and then leaned in and whispered into her ear. (He’s whispered into many women’s ears.) He’s also touched women’s faces and necks during other photo ops. Once at a swearing-in ceremony for a US senator, he held the upper arm of the senator’s preteen daughter, leaned down and whispered into her ear, as she became visibly uncomfortable. Then he kissed the side of her forehead, a gesture that made the girl flinch.
It’s all out in the open. News outlets wrote about these incidents. But the stories ran under light-hearted headlines like, “Photo of famously friendly Joe Biden goes viral” or “Here’s Joe Biden being Joe Biden with Ash Carter’s wife” or “Joe Biden: Sex symbol?,” a piece that I edited and now regret.
Joe Biden to Heitkamp at swearing in: “Spread your legs!”
In the case of Lucy Flores, Joe Biden abused his power as Vice President of the United States to violate the personal boundaries of a Latina woman.
By then, as a young Latina in politics, I had gotten used to feeling like an outsider in rooms dominated by white men. But I had never experienced anything so blatantly inappropriate and unnerving before. Biden was the second-most powerful man in the country and, arguably, one of the most powerful men in the world. He was there to promote me as the right person for the lieutenant governor job. Instead, he made me feel uneasy, gross, and confused. The vice-president of the United States of America had just touched me in an intimate way reserved for close friends, family, or romantic partners — and I felt powerless to do anything about it.
Joe Biden "was there to promote me as the right person for the lieutenant governor job. Instead, he made me feel uneasy, gross, and confused."
Time passed and pictures started to surface of Vice-President Biden getting uncomfortably close with women and young girls. Biden nuzzling the neck of the Defense secretary’s wife; Biden kissing a senator’s wife on the lips; Biden whispering in women’s ears; Biden snuggling female constituents. I saw obvious discomfort in the women’s faces, and Biden, I’m sure, never thought twice about how it made them feel. I knew I couldn’t say anything publicly about what those pictures surfaced for me; my anger and my resentment grew.
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Should the Democrats take a risk on Joe Biden as their candidate for the Presidency in the era of MeToo?
Saturday, Mar 30, 2019 · 1:45:48 AM +00:00 · igualdad
Biden spox statement in response to Flores’ article notes that Biden doesn’t recall the incident and refers to it as “her recollection.” He takes zero responsibility and does not issue an apology.
#CreepyJoe is now trending on twitter. This is not going to just go away for Joe. He must deal with it properly or step aside. There is too much at stake for him to drag Democrats through this.