Lucy Flores was standing in front of the twice-elected Vice President of these United States at a 2014 campaign rally when, “unexpectedly and out of nowhere,” she recounts, she felt “Joe Biden put his hands on my shoulders, get up very close to me from behind, lean in, smell my hair and then plant a slow kiss on the top of my head.
“You don’t expect that kind of intimacy from someone so powerful,” she said yesterday — or to be publicly fondled by “someone who you just have no relationship whatsoever.”
Flores is not alleging sexual assault, and certainly no ongoing harassment. But the former Nevada State Assemblywoman certainly does object to Biden’s “completely inappropriate” behavior. And she believes it “should” be considered in judging a presidential candidate.
“In my many years on the campaign trail and in public life,” responded Biden in a statement, “I have offered countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support and comfort. And not once — never — did I believe I acted inappropriately.”
Not buying this at all, Flores links (in her article for The Cut) to numerous “stories that were written” of “creepy” behavior by Biden, noting she came forward in large part because that evidence had been “dismissed by the media and not taken seriously.”
“It’s apparently a Senate rite of passage,” comedian Jon Stewart explained in a 2015 Daily Show segment entitled, The Audacity of Grope, “you’re not actually sworn in until Delaware Joe has felt up one female member of your immediate family.”
As the chortling subsides, the Biden presidential bid may be over before it begins.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.