Joe Biden accused of rape

[Sacred Jellybean]

The most (and only, imo) compelling argument above is that mainstream news sources haven't covered it. Hell, I can't even find anything on Breitbart. The closest I did see was that National Review brought it up. Not so much specific to the credibility of Tara Reide, but basically, "Look, now a woman is making an accusation against one of your people, Democrats, guess you should automatically believe her like you did with Christine Ford."

Otherwise, all of the talking points above can be explained in one way or another, which makes them sound self-serving, and a little too much like the spin people want to put on survivors' stories when they don't want to believe them.

• She wrote an article praising Putin. So? Her politics don't preclude her from being raped, even if it would technically come as an advantage to Biden's adversary. In an interview she gave with Katie Halper, she said that she liked Biden and his politics, and felt betrayed. And voted for Obama twice, in spite of his running-mate.
  
• You don't need to catch someone on camera, raping another person, to believe the survivor. The fact that we have evidence of Joe being creepy to women only bolsters the possibility that he took it another step.
  
• 11 months ago, she brought up a separate incident that happened around the same time. Not only close-touching, but being asked to serve drinks at a party, and harrassed/retaliated against at work when she declined to do so. It's true that this hasn't been corroborated, but for what it's worth, she did tell her brother and friend at the time it happened (each of whom confirmed this to Halper). Could she have gotten them to lie? Of course. But now we're talking about three people lying instead of one.
  
• Why do this now? I don't know. Why did Christine Blasey Ford "wait" until Kavanaugh was up for confirmation before coming out with her story? It takes a lot of courage to come out into public scrutiny and make an accusation. This story is more intense and (if true) traumatizing than close touching, something that could have been easier because other women were coming forward, which inspired her to do the same. Kind of like more women coming forward with #MeToo stories. Maybe Tara Reide didn't want to tell a difficult story to the public until she thought Biden had a chance to become the nominee, and she thought people should know.
  

So, none of this really tells us anything. If we did find out she's lying, this would certainly all explain her motivation for doing so. But I have a problem starting from the pretense that the woman is lying, and finding reasons that might be the case.

What do I believe? I don't know. I listened to the Halper interview, and it's very harrowing. If Reide is lying/acting, she should get an award. But the fact that only fringe sites are covering this sets off my BS alarm.