This Is How You Do It?

She's not very good at this...she had tons of time to say something when all the #MeToo was going on. Yet. She said nothing. She doesn't mind Bernie putting HIS hands on her shoulders pic.twitter.com/BxUn01HZzD

— PolitiTrek2 #ReleaseTheFullReport (@polititrek2) April 1, 2019

I saw one of these pictures this morning, didn't recognize Sanders as the guy with his hand on her shoulder.  The hot take is, once you allow any man to touch you, at all, you've opened the barn door and all the horses get to run free.

I'm not sure how this is comparable to taking a deep whiff off someone's head (which is flat creepy.  Even my wife would freak if I did that to her) and then a long kiss on the head (again, my wife would wonder why I was doing that to her), but it can't be offensive because:  shoulders and hands, and obviously she wants Bernie to win.

Right?

I mean, I get it:  the main reason Flores mentioned this at all is because Biden is pondering a run, and she clearly wasn't trying to help his prospects with this story.  But it is creepy, and she does have the autonomy to decide what is creepy to her, and what is not (see, e.g., the story of the wife of an Obama Cabinet secretary who calls Biden an old friend, and said he was comforting her when he rubbed her shoulders, an act captured by a photo, so quit talking about it!  Nobody is saying Flores is wrong because this woman wasn't skeeved by what Biden did.)  If Flores didn't mind, neither would anybody else; that she did means each of us has to decide if it was creepy or not.  But do we get to decide for her?

And is this really what we want to discuss in primary politics?

The upside is, this is the noise and kerfluffle that happens and means, almost literally, nothing.  The first Democratic debate is not until June (IIRC); if we're still discussing Biden and Flores by then, there is something systemically wrong with the Democrats.  On the other hand, conventions are 16 months (or so) away, the election itself 20 months away.  Nobody really cares about this stuff except Twitter-dwellers and psychopaths who think politics IS life (I'm recovering, thank you!).  OTOH, it is undeniable the train tracks are being laid even this early.  Is this REALLY the direction we need to go in?  Inviting, and then generating, this kind of nonsense?

I do think Biden is the wrong candidate, for a number of reasons (starting with age, and he's not that much older than me).  I don't think these accusations are the best way to go after him (though I find his conduct creepy and wrong).  And this kind of response is precisely why.

This ain't exactly "eyes on the prize" kind of conduct.