Hillary Clinton endorsed Joe Biden for president on Tuesday and appeared with the presumptive Democratic nominee during a “virtual” women’s town hall.
Biden held the town hall, whose topic was billed as a discussion on the coronavirus’ impact on women, at a time when his party’s leaders are facing criticism for failing to address a sexual assault charge leveled against him.
Biden is facing the allegation from Tara Reade, who claims Biden assaulted her in 1993 while he was a senator.
“Just think of what a difference it would make right now if we had a president who not only listened to the science ... but brought us together,” said Clinton, who lost the 2016 presidential race to Trump. “Think of what it would mean if we had a real president,” Clinton continued, rather than a man who “plays one on TV.”
Biden, as a former vice president and six-term senator, “has been preparing for this moment his entire life,” Clinton said. “This is a moment when we need a leader, a president like Joe Biden.”
In two recent interviews with The Associated Press, Reade alleged the assault occurred in the basement of a Capitol Hill office building in the spring of 1993. She filed a police report in Washington recently saying she was the victim of a sexual assault by an unnamed person in 1993, a copy of which was obtained by the AP.
It’s not the first time Reade has made an accusation against the former vice president. Last year, Reade publicly accused Biden of inappropriate touching but did not allege sexual assault.
Reade’s allegation comes at a pivotal time for Biden. The former vice president is seeking to unify the Democratic Party behind his campaign as the party’s presumptive presidential nominee after Sen. Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race. Women are a crucial voting bloc for Democrats, and any erosion of support for Biden could sink his candidacy in the fall.
The November contest between Biden and President Donald Trump will be the first presidential race of the #MeToo era, a movement that spurred numerous women to come forward with allegations of sexual assault, including against several prominent men in politics, entertainment and other industries.
Trump has also been accused of assault and unwanted touching by women, charges he denies. He apologized during the 2016 campaign after he was heard on a recording bragging about sexual misconduct.
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Biden has secured the endorsement and support of virtually every national Democratic leader, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the weekend. Biden has also committed to choosing a woman as his running mate.
As the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, Clinton made history by becoming the first woman to lead a major party’s ticket. Her endorsement is the latest sign of the Democratic Party rallying around its nominee to challenge President Donald Trump in the fall.
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The swift coalescing around Biden stands in stark contrast to four years ago, when Hillary Clinton was unable to win over a significant portion of the electorate’s left flank. Sanders battled her to the end of the primary calendar and waged a bitter fight over the party platform before endorsing her and campaigning for her in the fall. Hillary and Bill Clinton have argued that Sanders’ push deeply wounded her campaign against Trump.
The Trump campaign sought to foment the same tension on Tuesday by arguing that the Democratic establishment is again asserting itself.
“There is no greater concentration of Democrat establishment than Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton together,” Brad Parscale, Trump’s campaign manager, said in a statement. “Both of them carry the baggage of decades in the Washington swamp and both of them schemed to keep the Democrat nomination from Bernie Sanders.”
Despite overlapping for decades as Democratic heavyweights, the Clintons and Biden have never been especially close allies. Biden’s nearest alignment with Hillary Clinton came during Obama’s first term, when Biden was vice president and Clinton was secretary of state. Both had sought the Democratic nomination in 2008 — and both were dogged by their 2002 votes as senators in favor of the war powers resolution that President George W. Bush used to invade Iraq in 2003.
As first lady and secretary of state, Clinton was among the leading voices in women’s rights discussions around the world. She made headlines during her husband’s first term with forceful advocacy for women during a United Nations conference in Beijing, where the Chinese government was under fire for human rights abuses.
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“I believe that, on the eve of a new millennium, it is time to break our silence,” Clinton said. “It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights.”
She punctuated her argument with a line that has been replayed and repeated countless times since: “Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights.“
Biden campaigned for Hillary Clinton in the fall of 2016 and has praised her during his 2020 run as someone who “would have made a great president.”
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But he’s also implicitly criticized her campaign by saying repeatedly that Democrats did a poor job of reaching white working-class voters who once helped anchor the Democratic coalition. As recently as an April 15 fundraiser, Biden touted his own ability to win “the kind of folks I grew up with,” the “high-school educated” population who believe Democrats have abandoned them.
And he regularly cites that slice of the electorate when arguing he can win Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — the three states where Clinton’s narrow losses handed Trump an Electoral College majority despite her national popular vote lead.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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