Decisions, Decisions.

I haven’t been paying attention to it — — my attention is drawn entirely to the ongoing epidemiological and economic crisis — — but the presidential race just got very, very interesting.

Let me start with my prior assumptions:

* Donald Trump is the worst President in American history. He was already one of the worst, but the last three months have pushed Buchanan out of the worst-place position. It’s unfair to hold the virus against him, but the way the federal government has responded to the virus has been worse than most people I know could ever have imagined, and the absolute worst of any industrialized country in the world, and the result has worsened both the death toll and the economic catastrophe. It is absolutely essential to the country that he be ejected from office by the voters in November.

* Joe Biden is sufficiently old that I would never vote for him in a primary because he’d be more than eighty during his first term in office (and therefore at too high a statistical risk of diminished cognitive capacity). Worse, his performance in the debates last year often bordered on the incoherent and suggest that he’s *already* suffering from declining cognitive capacity. I’ll vote for him in the general election because it’s absolutely essential to the country that Donald Trump be ejected from office and because the structure of Presidential elections makes third party candidates unhelpful, but I really wish we had a different choice before us. Still, i’m an adult, and I understand that somtimes I have to make choices with no good options.

Enter Tara Reade.

Tara Reade is a former Biden staffer. She has filed a police report alleging that in 1993, Biden sexually assaulted her and, among other things, fingered her. The details are unimaginably brazen, but that isn’t enough to make them not credible, and apparently her mom called CNN to complain on Larry King Live … in 1993. There are no similar claims from other women, but that *also* isn’t enough to make Reade not credible.

Anyone who generally takes the position that women reporting sexual harassment should be believed has no choice, I think, but to believe Reade. Her story is sufficiently credible that it can’t simply be dismissed, and we have an obligation to consider it.

But what does that mean for the Presidential election?

This is where it gets interesting.

The best outcome is probably for Biden to “voluntarily” step aside, finding some plausible sounding excuse. But that’s unlikely to happen, and there’s nobody in the party with the power to force him to. And even if it did, who would the party replace him with, and how would you rally both the Bernie camp and the never Bernie camp to support the same person?

It’s not clear that a convention revolt forcing him out would be a good thing. Even if that could be done compliant with the rules, it would generate *incredible* ill will, and the delegates would spend weeks squabbling over who to replace him with. The eventual nominee would emerge damaged and have an uphill fight to win in November.

The most likely situation is that Biden remains the nominee and this cloud is hanging over him through the election.

So what’s the right thing to do if you believe Reade is credible but you believe that removing Trump is of critical importance?

This is the ethical question facing Democrats right now: is it ok to vote for someone you believe to be a rapist in order to get rid of Trump? Alternately, is keeping Trump a price you’re willing to pay to make the point that it’s unacceptable for a rapist to be President?

Some people will argue that you don’t have to decide this because you can vote for a third party candidate. While that’s true, voting for a third party candidate *almost certainly* helps Trump — — if no candidate gets a majority of the electoral votes, the House decides the election, casting one vote per state delegation, and even if the Democrats control a majority of the House the Republicans control a majority of the state delegations. So voting for a third party is really, in my view, a psychological crutch you can use to help persuade yourself that you’re not making the decision you are making.

This is *not* an easy choice. It causes a conflict between a deeply held value (we cannot turn a blind eye to rape and endorse rapists) and an extremely important goal (Trump is a disaster and he must go). It is a choice people are going to struggle with. It is a choice people *should* struggle with.

One thing i’m seeing from both sides of the debate is an angry insistence that the choice is easy, and that everyone who is even considering making the other choice is just *wrong*. That rhetoric is unhelpful. It causes people to dig in to their positions rather than listening, it reinforces tribal distinctions, and it is unkind and unfair — — because this *isn’t* an easy thing. Fundamentally *either* choice is a betrayal.

I hate that we’re here. I am furious that this didn’t come to light last year. I’m baffled as to where the generally good Democratic party oppo research people were last fall.

But this is where we are: we’re faced with an incredibly difficult decision about which of two fundamentally important values to sacrifice.

Welcome to 2020.