i don't have any reason to doubt lucy flores, either, especially considering that biden is known for pdas and he doesn't appear to be denying it, so much as he appears to be claiming that the interaction was so trivial to him that he does not remember it even happening at all.

and, it probably was trivial; where i may introduce some doubt is in questioning whether it really affected her to the extent she is claiming it did, and whether there is some danger in elevating a triviality to the level of rhetorical assault. when you politicize an issue to this extent, you are entering a space where you run the risk of trivializing the narratives of actual survivors of actual assault.

regardless, biden's reaction here needs to be to indicate that he understands that social roles are changing. given the triviality of the interaction, he has an opportunity here to demonstrate that he understands that, trivial or not, this is no longer acceptable behaviour in polite society. rather than acknowledge that there has been a cultural shift towards the assumption that all forms of affection require consent, he's digging in and asserting his innocence in intent. in the process, he's completely missing the point.

the reality is that it might not harm him in the primary, which is so disproportionately old. there is this misunderstanding in the media that the twittersphere represents the electorate, probably because virtually the entirety of the journalism profession exists so firmly within it. but, these hashtag movements really represent nearly immeasurable fragments of the population. the democratic primary is going to be dominated by wealthy white people older than 50, and they may not give a fuck about a peck on the head.

the danger here is that biden ends up breeding the same kind of apathy that clinton did in the general.

but, will this move his poll numbers?

i doubt it.