It is increasingly clear that poor Joe Biden just isn’t processing reality well. As he does everything he can to duck Tara Reade’s allegations, for example, he chose to be interviewed on MSNBC by Al Sharpton. As conservative talk-show host Larry Elder tweeted, “Only in America can a man who achieved fame by knowingly promoting Tawana Brawley’s false accusation of rape, become a Democratic “kingmaker,” get a TV show–and interview a Democrat who claims he’s a victim of a false accusation of rape.”

Well a man can do that; whether it’s smart is something else.

This is definitely not smart: Biden named former Democratic Connecticut Senator Chis Dodd to help steer his selection committee for Biden’s Vice-President, even though Dodd is notorious as the late Ted Kennedy’s drinking and carousing partner, and especially remembered for his cheerful admission that the two over-aged frat boys once collaborated on what Ted called a “waitress sandwiches.”To make Dodd’s assignment even more tone-deaf, Biden is generally assumed to be looking for a female running mate. So to choose the best qualified (not that qualifications are a big deal if you are making twin X-chromosomes the top criteria for selection) person to get Joe to the metaphorical finish line, Joe thinks the right choice is a former Senator who is acknowledged to have been a serial offender in the kinds of woman-abusing conduct that Biden claims he condemns despite being accused of it himself.

Huh. Interesting.

Dodd was…is?…also a  close friend of Harvey Weinstein for about 40 years. That doesn’t seem so surprising when one considers the origin of the “waitress sandwich” quip. From RealClearPolitics:

“The ugly turn of phrase comes courtesy of a profile of Kennedy in Gentlemen’s Quarterly and from the decidedly ungentlemanly behavior by Dodd when he and the Lion of the Senate were on the prowl at a D.C. French restaurant…. It was 1985… The waitress in question declined to comment for the GQ story but said that the account of what happened, which first appeared in the pages of Penthouse, was accurate. Dodd was there with Kennedy and their dates, both blonde and young. It was after midnight. The accompanying women left to use the restroom. The waitress was summoned, and that’s when she was allegedly thrown first onto the table by Kennedy — shattering glass and scattering cutlery – and then onto the lap of Dodd. Kennedy…jumped “on top and begins rubbing his genital area against hers, supporting his weight on the arms of the chair”…An eyewitness, Betty Loh, confirmed the incident….The waitress screamed as it happened. Dishwashers rushed to the room. The Senators allegedly laughed at the scene they caused, then haggled over who would pay the night’s bill…

Of course, that conduct would have caused problems for both Senators if reported in 1985, but the news media, then as now, usually made sure that liberal icons were shielded from accountability in such things, and Kennedy was used to generously paying off his victims. It is still indicative of the kinds of attitudes toward women that men of power from that era, including Kennedy, Dodd, Biden and yes, Donald Trump, subscribed to. How can one explain  Biden, especially with the accusation of Tara Reade hanging over him,  now choosing Dodd to be his trusted agent in the matter of selecting a female V.P., when he has so many other options who do not have a history of sexual assault themselves?

Here are some possible answers, one or more of which could be the case:

• He really is senile.
• He really is stupid.
• Despite his statements to the contrary, he  simply does not comprehend what’s wrong with powerful men like him treating women as their play-things.
• He just doesn’t care. He knows, or thinks he knows, that the news media will protect him, and are so determined to defeat Trump that he could appoint Harvey Weinstein to pick his VP and it wouldn’t hurt him.
• So many people have conveyed to him the same unethical rationale as Lisa Bloom —essentially that they will vote for any Democrat to defeat Trump— that he thinks he doesn’t have to worry about Reade.
• He has the worst political advisors of any Presidential candidate since Hillary Clinton…who, incidentally, would have been a great choice to head his VP committee.

Moe Vela, a Biden campaign surrogate who served as Biden’s director of administration when he was Vice President, was asked why Biden would make such a strange choice. He answered, “I think every one of us that’s a human being deserves the right to be judged on the totality of our being.” He emphasized that in Dodd’s case, “the good far outweighs any questionable action.”

It sounds like the Ruddigore Fallacy is about to get a work-out. From the blog’s list of terms and concepts:

Also known as “moral licensing,” the Ruddigore Fallacy (also included in the Rationalizations list) is the belief that unethical conduct can be erased with sufficient good conduct by the same person or organization, and that, sufficient good conduct entitles a group or individual to engage in unethical conduct with less criticism and negative consequences than a less accomplished individual or group should receive for the same misconduct.

This was the ancient rationalization relied upon by Kennedy (‘Yes, he let a girl drown and covered it up, but he made up for it by supporting abortion’) and Bill Clinton (‘Yes, he was a sexual predator, a harasser, perhaps a rapist, and set out to destroy anyone who accused him, but he made up for it by supporting abortion’), as well as President Trump, but supposedly the “cancel culture,” mostly fueled by progressives, no longer tolerates such conduct.

I guess we’ll soon learn whether they really meant what they have been saying. Biden appears to have decided how sincere they were.